Artificial intelligence (AI) requires a tremendous amount of electricity to power the specialized chips needed to run this technology. Because of that, many forecasters expect that natural gas demand will accelerate in the coming years as companies build more power plants to support AI data centers.

U.S. pipeline operator Energy Transfer on Monday entered into a long-term natural gas supply agreement with private, Denver-based company CloudBurst Data Centers for its development in Central Texas.

Under the agreement, Energy Transfer will supply CloudBurst’s data center in San Marcos with up to 450,000 metric million British thermal units (MMBtu) of firm natural gas per day. MMBtu is a unit used to measure heat content or energy value.