The hyperscalers spent years positioning themselves as clean energy champions, signing power purchase agreements for wind and solar like they were collecting baseball cards. Now they’re building their own natural gas plants — Meta’s 7.5-gigawatt facility in Louisiana, Amazon’s 7.6-gigawatt project in Texas, plus gigawatt-scale plants from Microsoft and Google — and walking straight into a market they barely understand. Energy research firm Noreva is warning that natural gas prices in certain U.S. hubs could triple to above $10 per million BTUs, up from today’s range of $2 to $4.50.

The math is straightforward, Noreva CEO Peter Gardett told TechCrunch. Domestic gas demand has been flat for years while new supply kept prices depressed. That’s ending. West Texas, where hyperscalers flocked for cheap associated gas that was practically stranded without pipelines, is now connected to export terminals. “They’ve finally built some pipelines out there, and a lot of that is headed towards export markets,” Gardett said. Domestic buyers now compete with global LNG prices for the first time, and AI data centers are piling on demand at the worst possible moment.

Fuel costs represent roughly half the operating expense of a large power plant, so a doubling or tripling of gas prices would make these “bring your own power” data centers dramatically more expensive to run. That translates directly to higher token costs for AI inference, or hyperscalers fleeing to the grid and pushing electricity prices up for everyone else. Gardett noted that at least one investor was “surprised” by how much gas price risk these companies are willing to absorb. “They’re doing things that are not normal for an off-taker to do,” he said.

Futures markets show no alarm yet — prices remain stable and nobody’s pricing in a spike. Gardett called that “not an unreasonable bet,” but he’s not convinced. The wildcard is regional price differentials, which could persist for extended periods near major data center clusters even if national prices stay moderate. With 80% of consumers already worried about data centers inflating their utility bills, a natural gas price shock would add fuel to an already heated backlash. Alphabet earnings calls discussing gas price correlations with Google’s margins? That’s not a hypothetical anymore. It’s the direction this is heading.