{"id":"2026-10-18-the-new-wark-times-bruce-wark-journalist-links-data-centre-pu","kind":"mention","date":"2026-10-18","title":"Journalist links data centre push to gas plants and renewed interest in fracking","outlet":"The New Wark Times / Bruce Wark","medium":"News feature","howFeatured":"Directly interviewed / quoted","canonicalUrl":"https://warktimes.com/2026/10/18/journalist-links-data-centre-push-to-gas-plants-and-renewed-interest-in-fracking/","verification":"Verified","notes":"NB Media Co-op Oct 19 is republication, not new original.","text":{"status":"fetched","excerpt":"Journalist links data centre push to gas plants and renewed interest in fracking | News and views about Sackville, New Brunswick and vicinity Skip to content Home About My Poems Diligent River Where Are You Now? Poetry Recordings Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening To A Mouse Anyone Lived In A Pretty How Town Afterwards The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence How Do I Love Thee (Sonnet 43) The Lake Isle of Innisfree Two poems by Allan Cooper Two poems by Emily Dickinson Two poems by Marilyn Lerch Casey at the Bat The…","bodyPlain":"Journalist links data centre push to gas plants and renewed interest in fracking | News and views about Sackville, New Brunswick and vicinity Skip to content Home About My Poems Diligent River Where Are You Now? Poetry Recordings Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening To A Mouse Anyone Lived In A Pretty How Town Afterwards The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence How Do I Love Thee (Sonnet 43) The Lake Isle of Innisfree Two poems by Allan Cooper Two poems by Emily Dickinson Two poems by Marilyn Lerch Casey at the Bat The Owl and the Pussycat The Chimney Sweeper spring is like a perhaps hand Voices of Earth I Have Put On Mourning Spring Pools More Poetry Recordings Heat Low Tide on Grand Pré Tantramar Revisited Shakespeare’s sonnets on summer, numbers 65 and 18 To Imagination Sestina To Autumn The Cartographer When the Frost is on the Punkin Jabberwocky The Listeners Sonnet 1 and Sonnet 17 Ozymandias Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73 Two Poems by Emily Dickinson My Papa’s Waltz ← Divided Tantramar council agrees to explore community building for Ward 4 Lower property tax rates likely for Tantramar next year, but water and sewer bills could rise 3.8% → Journalist links data centre push to gas plants and renewed interest in fracking Posted on October 18, 2026 by brucewark Journalist Nick Tsergas Journalist and activist Nick Tsergas says Canadian governments see the building of hyperscale, AI data centres as key to the development of the natural gas industry. “That’s what it means in Alberta where Premier Danielle Smith has said the whole point of the AI data centre build-out is to create demand for fossil fuels ,” Tsergas said Saturday during a public meeting in Saint John about how to stop the push for data centres across Canada including the 10 now being proposed in New Brunswick . He said governments promise that power-hungry data centres won’t raise electricity rates. “What that does is it actually incentivizes a company to just build its own power plant, and that usually means a gas plant,” he said. The U.S. firm VoltaGrid and its partner Beacon AI Centers of Calgary say they plan to build a 190MW gas plant for the proposed data centre in Lorneville, near Saint John, but would need an additional 190MW from the NB Power grid . Tantramar gas plant West Saint John resident David Thompson speaking into a mic held by moderator Ashley Anthony, a member of the group fighting the proposed Lorneville data centre “The natural gas plant that NB Power and the government both want to build at the Tantramar marsh, the real purpose is to supply these data centres,” said David Thompson, a member of the audience who lives in West Saint John. “They could easily use renewable wind power,” he said. His comments echoed those of Green leader David Coon, who told Warktimes last November that the proposed Tantramar gas plant would generate the additional 190MW that the Lorneville project would need. “So, where are they going to get it? Well, the only place they could possibly get it is from the new gas plant in Tantramar,” Coon said. Governments back natural gas During an interview after the Saturday meeting, Nick Tsergas pointed to a federal document obtained by the environmental group Greenpeace showing that one of the main “public policy benefits to Canada” of building a national network of data centres would be to create markets for Canada’s natural gas. “The premier of New Brunswick has floated the idea of lifting the moratorium on fracking ,” he said. “I don’t think she ran on that,” he added. “We’re talking about lifting the fracking ban because of the emergence of this new class of infrastructure, the AI data centre and the enormous power demands that it carries, and the timing is not a coincidence.” Nick Tsergas is a freelance journalist reporting on health, business and technology. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario and runs the website stopthedatacentre.ca . He also works with the Small Change Fund , a registered charity that helps raise funds for environmental and social justice projects. This is the first of three reports on Saturday’s meeting in Saint John . Share on X (Opens in new window) X Share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email Share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon Like this: Like Loading… Related This entry was posted in NB Power , Town of Tantramar and tagged Chignecto Isthmus gas/diesel plant , hyperscale data centres . Bookmark the permalink . ← Divided Tantramar council agrees to explore community building for Ward 4 Lower property tax rates likely for Tantramar next year, but water and sewer bills could rise 3.8% → Leave a Reply Cancel reply Name Email Website Turn on JavaScript to leave a comment. 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