UK oil and gas firm Orcadian Energy has terminated an agreement with an undisclosed US digital infrastructure operator to develop a gas-powered offshore data center in the North Sea. The July agreement proposed a data center of up to 200MW powered by gas from the Earlham and Orwell fields, estimated to hold 114 billion cubic feet and 31 billion cubic feet of gas, respectively. The deal was ended by mutual agreement because the Earlham project’s scope and timeline did not match the partner’s near-term deployment plans.
Orcadian CEO Steve Brown said the agreement had not progressed, but the collaboration had improved the company’s understanding of the requirements for an offshore data center at Earlham. He added that Orcadian remains confident in the opportunity and is engaging with other potential partners.
Orcadian will continue seeking partners for the project, targeting hyperscalers such as Google, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft, as well as neocloud providers including CoreWeave, Nebius, Lambda Labs, Crusoe Cloud, and Vultr. The company said its Gigagrid proposal allows external investors to fund the power station and data center without diluting existing shareholders’ stakes. Orcadian Energy is a UK-based oil and gas exploration and development company. The proposed facility would mark its first move into digital infrastructure.