Most rocket companies buy their fuel. SpaceX wants to include it. The filings in Texas show the company plans to build its own natural gas pipeline, an unusual move for a space firm and a warning.
SpaceX calls the line Starpipe. It will run eight miles, about 13 km, to Starbase, SpaceX’s company town on the Texas coast, and feed the next generation. Starship rocket. Reuters Citing county documents, it reported the plan and said construction could begin next month.
An affiliate, Lone Star Mineral Development, submitted the project to the Texas Railroad Commission last month, according to documents reviewed by Reuters. Starpipe should enter service on January 26. The Rio Grande Valley Business Journal gave the first information about the pipeline.
The reason is logistics. The starship burns about 630,000 gallons, about 2.4 million liters, of liquid methane per launch. Today, hundreds of tankers arriving by truck drag for hours. That pace can’t support what Musk wants next.
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SpaceX has conducted 12 Starship tests since 2023. Musk is talking about dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of launches a year. Pipeline replaces convoy. Imagine the gap between filling a car with a pump and carrying gasoline with a bucket.
Vertical integration, low
The pipeline is a visible part of a larger plan. SpaceX has spent years exploring its own gas rigs near Starbase and across Texas, Reuters found in land records. Since 2023, Texas has signed more than 100 toll oil and gas leases with landowners.
SpaceX day went publicpresident Gwynne Shotwell announced the plan on CNBC. The company will build pipelines, process its own fuel gas and attempt to drill its own gas. For a rocket manufacturer, it’s a remarkable ambition, from gas deep in the earth to methane in the launch tank.
Drilling would be a breakthrough. “I’m not saying it’s out of the realm of possibility,” Texas oil and gas consultant Stan Lindsey said. He noted that SpaceX has no experience in this field. If drilling doesn’t work out, he added, Starpipe is a “fallback position.”
Starpipe map
Geography takes shape. Starpipe would begin on 83 acres in the Port of Brownsville. A port official told Reuters that SpaceX is negotiating a 50-year lease on the site. At Starbase, plans submitted to the US Army Corps of Engineers show that SpaceX wants a liquefaction plant to convert the gas into liquid methane on site.
The company may not even need to drill to fill the line. SpaceX could tap Enbridge’s nearby Valley Crossing pipeline expansion, Lindsey said. Enbridge did not respond. Either way, SpaceX will have the same hunger from supply to the launch pad natural gas now they’re bringing tech giants into their energy deals.
A pipe of a larger size than the present one
A number indicates the scale of the plan. The Starpipe’s 16-inch diameter assumes a fuel requirement of more than 25 launches per year at the cadence currently permitted by the Federal Aviation Administration. The pipe targets a future SpaceX can’t legally fly yet.
This future is vast. Starship scheduled Starlink anchors AI data center satellitesand ambitions for Musk month and Mars. SpaceX’s avenue of thousands of solar-powered AI satellites is envisioned to have power approaching one-fifth of the US grid.
Starpipe is a small, quirky first step toward all that: a space company learning to think like an oil and gas firm. Whether it’s the regulators or the physics remains an open question buried in an eight-mile tube.
