Once they'll built they'll start to argue that they pollute anywhere so might as well stay there...

And still build as many as they can anywhere.

Their MO seems to be do whatever it takes to get started then finish

IIRC Microsoft built huge wind farms south of Chicago off of i55 to help power their data centers a couple decades ago, part of their carbon neutral plans or something similar.

The problem is Microsoft. It's also the datacentre builders. It's also the governments.

All three are a fucking problem

This is one of my critics of wilderness areas (I love them otherwise). Without having a place for people to be apart of and with the rest of the natural ecology of an area it's too easy to see avoiding active harm as an optional charity instead of a needed part of maintaining a living biosphere

Regulation through government won't do jack shit because the politicians writing those policies bury lots of grey areas and confusing language in there, because they're bought and paid for by the very tech companies those laws should regulate.

TL;dr laws and regulations won't do shit even though verbiage will be cleverly written to seem so.

Ah, but it is likely that the deal is locked in place with some kind of price guarantee. Meaning they've guaranteed that they'll buy for 20 years, and in return they get a certain price. I doubt they've managed to get it for a flat price for 20 years, but it's likely a curve that'll be beneficial to both parts of the agreement.

And then any other parties not part of the deal that also need this gas, those who don't have 20 year contracts on fixed prices, they get to carry the burden. :)

Yah but that requires coastal development or in the vicinity of the coast, with increasing sea level rise, that is just going to require these things to be made like giant doomsday bunkers able to survive a life extinguishing event. I still question the need for these data centers.