Many rocket companies buy their own fuel. SpaceX wants to pipe it. Drawings in Texas show that the company plans to build its own natural gas pipeline, an unusual transportation for a space company, and one that tells.
SpaceX calls the line Starpipe. It will run eight kilometers, about 13 kilometers, to Starbase, the SpaceX company’s city on the Texas coast, and provide the next generation Starship rocket. Reuters reported the project, citing district documents, saying construction could begin next month.
Its affiliate, Lone Star Mineral Development, filed the project last month with the Texas Railroad Commission, according to documents reviewed by Reuters. Starpipe should go live on January 26th. The Rio Grande Valley Business Journal first reported on the pipeline.
The reason is logistics. Starship burns about 630,000 gallons, 2.4 million gallons, of liquid methane at one time. Today when it arrives by truckload, hundreds of tankers crawl for hours. That pace can’t support what Musk wants next.
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SpaceX has flown 12 Starship tests since 2023. Musk talks about launching several times a year, then hundreds, then thousands. The pipeline replaces the convoy. Think of the gap between filling up a car at the pump and carrying a bucket of fuel.
Direct integration, all the way down
A pipe is a visible part of a larger system. SpaceX has spent years testing its own gas rig near Starbase and across Texas, Reuters found in world records. Through 2023, it has signed more than 100 oil and gas leases with Texas landowners.
The day SpaceX went public, president Gwynne Shotwell put the show on CNBC. The company will build pipelines, process its propellant, and look to drill for its gas. For a rocket builder, that’s an incredible prospect, from gas deep underground to methane in a launch tank.
Drilling can be a jump. “I’m not saying it’s overwhelming,” said Stan Lindsey, an oil and gas consultant from Texas. He noted that SpaceX has no experience in this field. If the drilling doesn’t pan out, he added, Starpipe is “the place to fall back on.”
Starpipe Map
The geography is sustainable. Starpipe will begin on an 83-acre site at the Port of Brownsville. SpaceX is negotiating a 50-year lease on that land, a port official told Reuters. At Starbase, plans filed with the US Army Corps of Engineers show SpaceX wants a liquefaction plant to convert pipeline gas into liquid methane on site.
The company may not even need to drill to fill the line. SpaceX could affect the expansion of Enbridge’s nearby Valley Crossing pipeline, Lindsey said. Enbridge did not respond. Either way, SpaceX will own the property from supply to launchpad, the same hunger for natural gas that is now drawing tech giants to their energy deals.
A pipe that is larger than today
Number one indicates the scale of the program. Starpipe’s 16-inch diameter means a fuel requirement of more than 25 per year, the cadence the Federal Aviation Administration currently allows. The pipeline targets a future SpaceX that has yet to officially fly.
That future is great. Starship supports Starlink, planned AI data center satellites, and Musk’s ambitions for the moon and Mars. SpaceX’s prospectus envisions thousands of solar-powered AI satellites drawing power from nearly a fifth of the US grid.
Starpipe is a small, strange first step in everything: a space company learning to think like an oil and gas firm. Whether the controls, and the physics, will put it this far remains an open question buried in eight miles of pipe.
