Oklahoma's data center boom is here. Will Bartlesville be next?

Big tech is betting trillions on artificial intelligence — and billions are being funneled into Oklahoma.

While some municipalities, government officials and community leaders are welcoming these investments with open arms, others are doing whatever they can to keep them at arm's length.

In places like Tulsa, Muskogee and Stillwater, the projects promise massive investment, infrastructure upgrades, thousands of temporary construction jobs and hundreds of permanent positions.

These projects raise concerns about water use, power demand, secrecy in the approval process and whether the jobs created are worth the cost.

Now, that conversation is happening in Bartlesville.

Macy Travis | The Wiley Post

Could a data center come to Bartlesville?

“We get approached weekly about opportunities,” said Chris Batchelder, President of the Bartlesville Development Authority.

Batchelder said many of those requests are too large for Bartlesville to accommodate, with some companies seeking hundreds of acres.

“We get ones looking for 100 acres, and we don't have the room for that,” he said.

Still, Batchelder confirmed the authority “was approached and in continuing conversations with” two smaller technology-related prospects: one telecom hub and one data center project in the 5- to 15-megawatt range.

That is far smaller than the hyperscale projects transforming other parts of Oklahoma that report numbers in the hundreds of megawatts. But even a “small” data center can have a major impact.

A 5- to 15-megawatt data center may sound small, but it would still be a major power user. At full capacity, such a facility would draw about as much electricity as roughly 3,300 to 11,000 average Oklahoma homes, based on 2024 residential electricity use data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

To put that into perspective, according to 2020–2024 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, Bartlesville has about 14,819 households.

That means even a smaller 5-megawatt facility could add the equivalent electrical demand of roughly 23% of the city’s households. At the upper end, a 15-megawatt facility could equal nearly 74% of the city’s residential household count.

In other words, depending on the size and design of the project, a single “small” data center could place demand on the grid comparable to adding anywhere from about one-quarter to nearly three-quarters more homes to Bartlesville overnight.

And that, Batchelder said, is where the conversation starts to get complicated.

One of the biggest hurdles facing large-scale data center development in Oklahoma is not land. It is power.

Batchelder said that projects larger than 50 megawatts typically require a dedicated electrical substation, a costly and time-consuming piece of infrastructure that can add years to a project timeline.

Oklahoma utility companies are already warning that they may struggle to keep up.

“The last I heard, they were quoting 2031 before the line would get knocked down enough that they could start looking at new projects,” Batchelder said.

He said there are reportedly hundreds of substation applications already in the queue with the Public Service Company of Oklahoma (PSO).

PSO confirmed their queue was around 200 applications long for projects needing substations, but the number can change weekly. Additionally, they said 50 megawatts is a general rule of thumb for determining whether projects need substations, and a load study would be done to make a final determination. 

That backlog may shield Bartlesville from the largest projects, at least for now.

The statewide energy crunch

Across Oklahoma, utilities are sounding alarms about unprecedented demand driven by artificial intelligence, cloud computing, manufacturing expansion and cryptocurrency mining.

In its 2025 Integrated Resource Plan, OG&E said it was receiving requests for “hundreds or even thousands” of megawatts from prospective large-load customers, specifically citing data centers and crypto operations as the main drivers.

PSO’s parent company, American Electric Power, said in a 2026 planning document that it expects a 76% increase in system peak demand between 2026 and 2030, driven largely by data centers and industrial growth.

Reporting by The Frontier’s Clifton Adcock found that the need for more power is only expected to grow.

As of September, PSO reported it had 11 new “large load” customers under letters of agreement or contract, representing about 779 megawatts of demand — enough to power roughly half a million homes.

Without acquiring new sources of power, PSO told regulators it could face a 31% power deficit, or 3,124 megawatts, by 2031. OG&E has projected its own generation shortfall of 3,459 megawatts by 2035.

Those numbers help explain why communities in Oklahoma are wrestling with whether to embrace these projects now — or slow them down until infrastructure catches up.

For Bartlesville, the current projects under discussion appear small enough to avoid many of those issues. 

Batchelder said that from what he has seen, newer, smaller data centers also tend to be more efficient and place less strain on local water and electrical resources than older or larger facilities.

And while the power question may be the biggest immediate challenge, it is far from the only one.

Fewer jobs, different economics

Another major question is whether the economic payoff justifies the strain.

Batchelder said Bartlesville's available industrial land, existing utility infrastructure, robust standardized incentives and location near Tulsa make it attractive for many economic development projects. 

But even a “small” project would represent a new kind of industrial development for the city — one with an economic equation different from that of a traditional manufacturing plant.

By comparison, Batchelder said manufacturing or aviation-related employers often create ripple effects.

A company located at Bartlesville's airport, for example, might attract suppliers, contractors and support businesses.

“You're not going to get that with a data center,” he said. “Those do not create a lot of jobs.”

Still, Batchelder said smaller projects may be a better fit for Bartlesville's needs, especially in underused areas like the Sunset Industrial Park near the airport.

“Unused space doesn't provide anything to the citizens of Bartlesville,” he said.

And whether communities welcome them or not, Batchelder believes the trend is not slowing.

“It's the BDA's job to explore avenues for economic growth in Bartlesville,” Batchelder said. “Would I rather have a 200,000-square-foot manufacturing plant than a similar-sized data center — you bet, but that’s not on the table right now.”

But even if the BDA is not actively recruiting a project, that does not mean one couldn't still come to town.

Batchelder said companies are not required to work through the BDA to locate in Bartlesville.

“We don't control which companies come to town and who doesn’t,” he said. “The city issues business licenses; we don't do that.”

He said developers typically approach the BDA when they are seeking incentives, land or assistance with recruitment, but a company could pursue a site independently.

Projects located within city-owned industrial parks, however, would still require approval from the Bartlesville City Council.

Batchelder said that before any project, such as a data center, received incentives, it would go before the BDA board for approval and then the city council. 

In Bartlesville and across Oklahoma, officials and residents are also weighing how much water these projects use, how many permanent jobs they create and whether the tax incentives often used to attract them are worth the tradeoff.

For now, Bartlesville’s role in Oklahoma’s data center boom remains uncertain.

But the debate is no longer theoretical.

It has already begun.

Next in this series: Can Bartlesville handle a data center? The Wiley Post examines the city’s infrastructure — and why one city councilor believes the right deal could put money back in residents’ pockets.