The fossil-AI nexus: petrostate capitalism, computing power, and the production of powered land

The so-called AI boom is part of an infrastructure-led industrial strategy, converting speculative computing demand into bankable fossil generation, transmission expansion, and water- and land-intensive industrial sites. This article bridges digital infrastructure studies and the new state capitalism literature by theorising compute as a socially produced resource whose availability depends on territorial governance. I argue that the buildout is being assembled through a fossil–AI nexus, a fossil–finance–platform coalition that produces powered land: an emergent asset form whose value derives from positionality in a constrained energy system that secures deliverable ‘firm’ power through revenue guarantees, deliverability rights, and cost-allocation arrangements. Drawing on a review of major gas-to-data centre co-location projects and a comparative analysis of PJM and ERCOT, I identify three recurring de-risking channels that convert uncertain load forecasts into durable, carbon-intensive infrastructure: revenue certainty, delivery certainty, and cost shifting. I show how ‘reliability,’ alongside security and competitiveness framings, compresses timelines, translates engineering criteria into bankability, and narrows public contestation. I also show how opacity, or ‘blackboxing,’ stabilises powered land by restricting access to contractual and cost-allocation terms, while relocating politics to transparency disputes and siting conflicts over where data centres go and who pays for the buildout.