Childress vs. Kiowa What IREN signed in Texas · what Pittsburg County is being asked for · and what the company’s own balance sheet says about the need

Before comparing two tax deals it is worth settling the question they are both supposed to answer. An abatement is justified by necessity. So take the necessity first, from the company’s own audited accounts.

At 30 June 2026 IREN held $5,895.6m of unrestricted cash and a further $1,723.9m restricted inside its GPU financing subsidiary. During that year it raised $4,742.8m from issuing shares and $6,299.6m from convertible notes — $11.0 billion in twelve months — and the notes carry roughly $59.5m of annual coupon on $6.75bn of principal, a blended rate of about 0.88%.¹¹

More to the point, the company tells its own shareholders what this business earns. In the FY26 results release IREN said recent three-year contracts price at above $20 million of revenue per megawatt of IT load, “representing a ~2 year payback”, with active discussions at about $25 million per MW; 2026 capacity is described as largely sold out. That payback is on the equipment, not the campus: the release’s own footnote estimates it on “capital expenditure for GPUs and ancillaries divided by contracted revenue less estimated direct costs”, and it describes the company’s recent contracts generally, not Kiowa.¹²

Childress County is the control group, and an unusually good one: the agreements are executed, they are public, and anyone can download them from the county’s own website.⁴

IREN — then trading as Iris Energy — entered three tax abatement agreements with Childress County under Chapter 312 of the Texas Tax Code. The counterparty is not a single project company. It is IE US Development Holdings 3 Inc. together with IE US Hardware 1, 2, 3 and 4 Inc., all Delaware corporations, and the agreements state that each is a party and all are jointly and severally liable. Notices go to Will Roberts at IREN’s Sydney head office.⁵⁶

Each agreement abates 100% of county property taxes on eligible property for ten calendar years and says so twice, adding that the abatement “shall not extend beyond ten (10) Calendar Years.” Pre-existing value stays fully taxable throughout, and the property returns to the roll in full at the end. Improvements other than servers and transformers must remain in place for twenty years after commercial operation. If the company misses its deadlines the county may cancel and recapture the abated taxes less the payments already made — and that recapture is expressly the county’s sole remedy.⁶⁷

Childress County describes the combined project in its own statutory notice as approximately $1.4 billion of improvements within Iris Energy Reinvestment Zone #2, which it created in October 2024 after IREN bought additional land adjoining the original zone.⁹

Two details are worth holding onto. The county was not the only party at the table: Clarendon College negotiated its own agreements, and its Phase 3 payment runs at $145 per megawatt per year — about $29,000 a year at 200 MW. Every taxing entity got its own signed instrument.⁸ And the deadline to reach commercial operation was a hard calendar date in each agreement, extendable by exactly one year on written notice and a $25,000 fee.⁶⁷

The Pittsburg County proposal is not a Texas-style abatement scaled up. It is a different instrument, running four times longer, over a project the plan values at a different order of magnitude.

The Emerald ProjectCo Data Center Project Economic Development Project Plan was prepared for the Board of County Commissioners with the assistance of Floyd & Driver, PLLC of Norman, and recommended for approval by the county’s Statutory Review Committee on 21 April 2026 under the Oklahoma Local Development Act.¹² It creates two Incentive Districts over approximately 2,000 acres about two miles south of Kiowa along US 69, one district per phase.¹³

The abatement is a sliding scale, recalculated every year against megawatts actually energized, applied to value above a fixed Base Value:

The Term is twenty-five years from each district’s Activation Date, and the districts may be activated independently and in any order. A district cannot activate before 1 January 2028, and requires at least 50 MW energized — or reasonably expected within twelve months — together with capital investment in that district exceeding one billion dollars. All districts must be activated within ten years of the adopting resolution.¹

The Base Value is the assessed value of the project site as of 1 January 2026, certified by the County Assessor within ninety days of adoption and then fixed for the entire twenty-five years. Everything above it is what gets abated.¹

The scale is the part that does not resemble Childress at all. The plan’s own cost table puts each phase at approximately twenty-five billion dollars:

Two phases at that figure is fifty billion dollars against Childress’s $1.395 billion — thirty-six times the capital, on three and a half times the land, for two and a half times as long.¹⁵

One clause deserves separate notice. Within sixty days of adoption the company must enter a Tax Incentive Agreement with the county and every affected Taxing Entity — Kiowa Public Schools, Pittsburg County, the Pittsburg County Health Department, Kiamichi Technology Center and the Southern Oklahoma Public Library System — and no district activates until all of them have signed. But the plan also provides that the company may terminate that agreement on not less than ninety days’ written notice, at which point the incentives end and accrued payments survive.¹

Nothing here is an artist’s impression. Each shape is a land-survey polygon downloaded from the agency that maintains the survey, and every boundary drawn is one the legal documents actually name. Where a document does not fix a boundary, none is drawn.

How the ground was assembled

The drawings above are survey polygons — what the legal descriptions cover. The county clerk’s index says how the ground actually reached Emerald ProjectCo Inc., and it names a company the county’s own record already knows. Black Mountain Energy Storage II LLC — the Austin battery-storage developer that wrote to McAlester on 30 July 2025 asking for six million gallons of raw water a day for a “proposed data center south of Kiowa,” a letter that names no operator — assigned its land rights to Emerald ProjectCo in five instruments recorded on 21 and 27 October 2025, six weeks before the county’s review committee first met.⁴⁰

Until now the link between Black Mountain and IREN rested on the wording of a water request. It is now a chain of recorded assignments with instrument numbers, in the same sections the incentive districts cover.

And it no longer rests on the index either. On 11 September 2026 the County Clerk produced certified copies of all twenty-three Pittsburg County instruments — 99 pages, in full, with nothing withheld — in answer to the Open Records Act request published on the records page. Every row below links the document itself.⁴⁰ The copies are the scanned pages the clerk sealed, not a re-rendering of them, and nothing in them has been obscured.

Unless marked otherwise every tract is in Township 3 North, Range 13 East — the six sections drawn above. Two are not. 2026-004662 covers Section 4 of Township 5 North, two townships north of the site and outside both incentive districts. 2026-029011 is recorded in Atoka County altogether, over Section 4 of Township 2 North. Neither appears in the Project Plan, and no document read for this page explains what either is for.

What was filed under the other name

Every instrument above names Emerald ProjectCo. They were found by searching the county’s index for that name — which is why, for a week, this page missed everything filed under Black Mountain Energy Storage II, LLC. The clerk produced those on 14 September 2026: fifteen more instruments, 107 pages, published here in full.⁵⁰ They change what this section can say, in four ways.

• The first purchase agreement is dated effective 26 November 2024. The memorandum at 2025-004120 gives notice of Black Mountain’s purchase and sale agreement for Kiowa ground “dated effective November 26, 2024” — eight months before Emerald ProjectCo was incorporated, eight months before the water letter, and almost a year before the county first put the project on an agenda. It had been amended twice by 23 January 2025, and twice more in October. The memorandum itself is dated as of the same day but was signed in April 2025 — by James Weaver as trustee and by Black Mountain’s CEO, Rhett Bennett — and recorded that May.
• The State of Oklahoma leased its own minerals to the developer. On 16 April 2026 the Commissioners of the Land Office recorded two oil and gas mining leases to Black Mountain over Sections 34 and 35 — school land, inside the site. Each is a three-year paid-up lease executed 29 September 2025, and each recites its bonus on its face: $104,000.00 for Tract 48 and $169,000.00 for Tract 49, plus $80 and $130 in delay rentals. $273,210 in all, paid to the trust that funds Oklahoma’s public schools — while the abatement these districts propose would hold back the ad valorem revenue that funds the schools here.
• Somebody was clearing the mineral estate. 2025-008436 is not a lease at all but a Waiver of Surface Rights, in which Spess Oil Company gives up its right to work the surface over Section 26. In Oklahoma the mineral estate is dominant — a driller may use the surface above it — so this is the risk being bought off a year before any public hearing.
• There is a lender, and a mortgage. On 6 April 2026 Black Mountain mortgaged 68 tracts across Sections 21, 22 and 28 to First Financial Bank for $6,000,000, with a companion assignment the same day. It bought two of those tracts that same day, from the Kilgores and the Phipps Trust, for what the stamps put at $8,100,500. None of that ground is in the six sections the Project Plan covers, and no document read for this page says what it is for.

What the land cost

Not one of these instruments states a price. Oklahoma deeds do not recite the consideration; they carry a documentary stamp instead, and the amount of that stamp is printed in the recording block at the top of the first page. The rate is fixed by statute — seventy-five cents for each $500 of the consideration or any fractional part thereof, 68 O.S. § 3201(A) — so the stamp runs backwards into the price.⁴¹ Eight of the twenty-three instruments carry one. The other fifteen are assignments, releases and one re-recorded correction, which convey nothing sold and are taxed at nothing: § 3201(B) limits the tax to “conveyances of realty sold” and § 3202(3) exempts a deed that corrects an earlier one for no further consideration.

That is $83,682,500 across eight deeds between 29 December 2025 and 11 August 2026 — on ground the company is asking to have taxed at fifteen per cent of its value for twenty-five years. Local reporting in May put the figure at $19 million for 340 acres, from the same public index; the deeds recorded since carry most of the rest. The arithmetic is a bracket rather than a recital, because a fractional part of $500 is stamped as a whole one — each figure is the top of its bracket and cannot be more than $500 high. What the stamps cannot tell you is what was bought with each dollar: acreage is not stated either, so no price per acre is claimed here.

What the record can and cannot settle

• Buying continued after the vote was tabled, and not cheaply. Warranty deeds ran into Emerald ProjectCo on 30 June, 14 July and 11 August 2026, after the Board tabled the districts on 22 June — $22,148,500 of the total above. Each is paired with a release of an earlier option, and a release-and-deed pair is exactly what an exercised option looks like, so the company may have been completing purchases it was already bound to complete. The deeds do not say which, and this page does not guess. What they do settle is that the money moved after the vote stalled.
• The index’s labels are not the documents’ own. Three instruments the county files as “Misc.” — 2026-004660, -004662 and -004663 — are headed Memorandum of Contract and name Emerald ProjectCo Inc. as BUYER under a contract to purchase. They are recorded options, not miscellany. Two more the index calls simply “Deed” are General Warranty Deeds. The Type column above now shows what each document calls itself.
• The descriptions are no longer truncated. The index cut long legal descriptions off at “+1 more”, “+5 more”, “+9 more”. The Land column still shows the index’s short form, but the certified copy behind each row carries the description in full, metes and bounds included. No acreage total is claimed because none of these instruments states one.
• The grantors are private people. Landowners who sold or optioned land are named because they are parties to public recorded instruments, and their signatures appear on the copies because a recorded deed is a public document sold over the counter to anyone. Selling land is not a position on the abatement, and nothing on this page suggests otherwise.

Read the two columns together and the Oklahoma proposal looks better for the county — because on its face it is. On a stabilized full build of both phases the illustrative minimums plus the Community Betterment Payment come to roughly $35 million a year: about $25,000 per megawatt, against the $1,667 per megawatt Childress County actually collects. Fifteen times better, on paper.¹⁶

And then the plan takes it back. The minimum payment table is introduced as a non-binding example, intended solely to demonstrate the general economic framework, and not intended to establish fixed or binding payment obligations. The Phase 1 distribution — $11.0m to Kiowa Public Schools, $3.4m to Kiamichi Technology Center, $2.8m to the county, $1.0m each to the School Common Fund and the library system, $0.6m to the Health Department — is introduced as an example of the dispersion. The real figures go into a Tax Incentive Agreement that does not yet exist.¹

This is the part nobody has to argue about. The number is written down twice, by two different sets of lawyers, in two states, and neither of them is hiding it.

Every one of the three Childress agreements carries the same representation. If the company builds the improvements and reaches commercial operation, the project will add at least $500,000 to the tax roll and will:

Ten jobs for a 300-megawatt, $592.5 million phase. Thirty across the whole 600 MW campus, if none of them overlap. That is the enforceable employment consequence of Childress County giving up all of its property tax on the site for a decade.⁵⁶⁷

Pittsburg County’s Project Plan is blunter still. Section 12.5 is headed “Financial Impact on Business Entities,” and it explains why the county should not worry about the cost of new residents:

The next paragraph gives the number:

Forty against thousands. The county’s own consultants wrote the cliff into the plan and then listed the small permanent workforce as a point in the project’s favour — because few permanent workers means few new children in Kiowa Public Schools and few new calls on the Health Department. As a fiscal argument that is entirely coherent. As an answer to “what does this do for people who live here,” it is the whole answer, and it is already on the record.¹

Childress is the only place where the question can be answered with evidence instead of argument. IREN has been building and operating there since 2022. So: what happened to the county?

The population went up, then went back down

Childress County gained people while the site was being built and lost them once the first phase was done. The Census Bureau’s annual estimates put net migration at +164 in 2021 and +78 in 2022 — then −62 in 2023 and −59 in 2024. County population peaked at 6,834 in 2022 and was back to 6,679 by 2024, below where it started the decade.¹⁸

This is the jobs cliff, drawn from the census rather than from an argument. The crowd arrives, and then it leaves.

Nobody built any housing

Across the entire period — 2018 through 2025 — the Census Bureau’s Building Permits Survey records zero new housing units authorized in Childress County. Not one, in any year, of any type.¹⁹

That is not a gap in the survey. In the 2024 file, 188 of the 223 Texas counties listed reported at least one authorized unit, and Childress’s small neighbours are among them: Donley authorized three, Dallam five, Hardeman one.¹⁹ A county that gains a $1.4 billion capital project⁹ and builds no housing is a county whose workforce did not move in.

Where the jobs actually landed

The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts every job covered by unemployment insurance, by industry, by county. It is the closest thing to a headcount that exists, and for Childress it says something the brochures do not.

Three things fall out of that table. No data-processing establishment has ever been reported in Childress County in any year — the industry the project belongs to does not appear in the county’s employment record at all. The nearest proxy is utilities, and it stands at 81 jobs for the whole county in 2025 — a figure that covers IREN, Lancium and the wind and solar operators together. And construction is still climbing: 56, then 92, then 165, at $1,785 a week. The crowd is still on site.²⁰

The county’s average weekly wage did rise, from $759 to $1,023. But an average moves when you add well-paid outsiders to a low-wage base, and the base is where most people work: retail trade pays $648 a week against $1,817 in utilities. Retail wages rose 42% in nominal dollars across those six years, which is a real gain once inflation is accounted for — and a smaller one than the headline average suggests.²⁰

What happened to the tax roll

This is the part that bears directly on what Pittsburg County is being asked to do, because it is the thing an abatement actually does.

Childress County added $901.5 million of market value between 2021 and 2025. Of that, $221.2 million reached the taxable roll. Roughly three quarters of the new value never became taxable, and the gap between what the county is worth and what it can tax widened from $588 million to $1.27 billion.²¹

The honest qualification, stated because it matters: that gap is not all abatement. It includes homestead and over-65 exemptions, disabled-veteran exemptions, and the agricultural and open-space valuations that dominate a ranching county. What can be said is narrower and still striking — the gap grew by $680 million in four years, in a county that was losing population, and agricultural valuations do not move like that.

And the counterweight, which belongs here for the same reason: Childress County came out ahead in cash. Its tax rate fell from 0.578882 to 0.535000 and its levy still rose, to $3.96 million in 2025 from $3.43 million the year before.²¹ A county can abate most of a project and still collect more than it did — which is exactly the argument that will be made in Pittsburg County, and it is not a foolish one.

The schools, which is the part that does not transfer

Then there is the finding that changes how the Kiowa proposal should be read.

Childress ISD’s taxable value more than doubled while the county’s abatement gap was widening.²¹ The school district was not inside the county’s deal. The county’s own agreements make that arrangement explicit: Phase 1 carries a separate $50,000 annual Education Program Payment which the County undertakes to distribute to the independent school districts and community colleges serving county residents — a payment made to the schools precisely because their levy was not being abated. Clarendon College, likewise, negotiated its own agreement rather than being folded into the county’s.⁵⁸

An abatement has a price, and it is knowable. Childress County’s can be priced from its executed agreements and the state’s published tax rate. Pittsburg County’s can be priced from its own Project Plan. Neither county has published the comparison, so here it is, with every input and every assumption named underneath.

Childress County, Texas — ten years, executed

Childress County keeps 13.4% of what the project would otherwise have paid it, for ten years. Clarendon College collects a further $29,000 a year on Phase 3 under its own agreement; its Phase 2 payment was not read for this file.⁸ Childress ISD is not in this table at all, because it was never in the deal — and its taxable value more than doubled.²¹

Pittsburg County, Oklahoma — twenty-five years, proposed

Pittsburg County and its taxing entities keep 17.6%, for twenty-five years. Split the way the Project Plan splits it, the abated share works out at roughly $1.16 billion of Kiowa Public Schools’ money per phase, $397 million of the county’s, $343 million of Kiamichi Technology Center’s, $113 million of the library system’s and $71 million of the Health Department’s.¹

The headline percentages mislead, and this is the point of putting them side by side. Childress abated one hundred percent and Kiowa proposes eighty-five — yet after payments in lieu the two counties retain almost the same share, 13% against 18%. What actually differs is duration, scale and who is inside the deal: ten years against twenty-five, $1.4 billion of investment against $50 billion, and a school district left whole against a school district made a signatory.

Four hundred megawatts are missing

The Project Plan is built throughout on two phases of approximately 600 MW each — 1,200 MW. Its cost tables, its abatement tiers and its payment schedule all assume it.¹ IREN’s own site page and its annual report describe the Oklahoma campus as 1,600 MW across 2,000 acres.¹³¹¹ Nothing published reconciles the two — and because the abatement tiers stop at “greater than 550 MW,” a project forty percent larger pays on the same top tier.

Two exhibits are blank

Exhibit C of the Project Plan is titled “Existing Uses and Conditions.” Exhibit D is titled “Proposed Improvements and Uses.” In the copy the county published, both pages are empty but for their headings. The document meant to record what is on the land now, and what will be on it afterwards, says neither.¹

The base value is already fixed

Base Value is the assessed value of the project site as of 1 January 2026, certified within ninety days of adoption and then frozen for the whole twenty-five-year term. Everything above it is what gets abated. The land was being assembled through 2025 and 2026; the clock on the county’s share was set before any vote was taken.¹

Childress got joint and several liability; the Oklahoma plan names one company and no guarantor

The Texas agreements bind five Delaware corporations and state that each is a party and all are jointly and severally liable.⁵⁶ The Pittsburg County plan names Emerald ProjectCo Inc. alone. That name does not appear among the seven significant subsidiaries IREN lists in its annual report, and the plan contains no parent guarantee.¹¹¹ Those seven are all on the registers: five Delaware entities filed between July 2021 and February 2026, every one with Corporation Service Company as agent, and two British Columbia companies registered in 2021 and 2023.²⁴²⁶

The state registries supply what the plan does not, and it is not much. Emerald ProjectCo Inc. was incorporated in Delaware on 29 July 2025 and qualified to do business in Oklahoma as a foreign for-profit business corporation on 16 December 2025, four months before the Statutory Review Committee’s recommendation. The certified Oklahoma filings, obtained on 4 September 2026 and published below, go further than the registry index. The qualification gives the corporation’s principal place of business as 620 FM 1033, Childress, Texas 79201, the address of IREN’s Childress data center campus; states its Oklahoma business as “project development and land acquisitions”; declares assets of $21,100 against liabilities of $1,000, authorised capital of $10 in 1,000 common shares, and a maximum of $187,000,000 to be invested in Oklahoma in the current fiscal year; and is signed by Will Roberts as President and Jason Date as Secretary. Will Roberts is the name of IREN’s co-founder and co-chief executive. The shareholder is still not named on any record read.²⁴²⁵

Two details cut in opposite directions. The Delaware domicile and the registered agent — Corporation Service Company, at the same Wilmington address as all five Delaware subsidiaries IREN does list — are consistent with the Kiowa company sitting inside the IREN group; but that agent serves a great many unrelated companies from that address, and the name breaks the IE US convention every other US subsidiary follows. The certified filings settle the direction. The qualification was signed by Will Roberts as President, from IREN’s own Childress campus; the Secretary of State was written in as registered agent on the form itself, and Corporation Service Company replaced it on 30 July 2026 over William Roberts’s signature. What the county is being asked to contract with, on the public record, is a corporation a little over thirteen months old, capitalised at ten dollars, with $21,100 of assets at qualification, an IREN co-chief executive as its president, and no disclosed owner or guarantor.²⁴²⁵

The Oklahoma file, document by document

Certified copies and certificates issued by the Secretary of State on 4 September 2026, published here in full.²⁵

• Certificate of Qualification, document 74120930002, filed and effective 16 December 2025, with the Delaware Certificate of Good Standing of 2 December 2025 attached: name, principal place of business, purpose, agent, capital, assets and liabilities, signatures
• Certificate of Authority, 16 December 2025
• Appointment of Registered Agent, document 77756320002, 30 July 2026: Corporation Service Company replaces the Secretary of State, signed William Roberts
• Information printout, 4 September 2026: status, addresses, filings, stock, invested capital
• Certificate of Good Standing, 4 September 2026
• Certificate of Fact, registered agent and office, 4 September 2026
• Certificate of Fact, status and registered agent, 4 September 2026
• Certified-copies certificate listing every document on file, 4 September 2026
• The Secretary of State order record, 78346070003, under which the set was issued

The Pittsburg County plan says nothing about where the campus would get its water, how much, what is in the cooling loop, where it goes when drained, how many backup generators there would be, or what noise limit applies. The Texas record says a great deal, because the only comparable IREN campus sits inside a water system that has been in emergency conditions for seventeen months.

The Greenbelt system, which supplies Childress

What IREN says about water, and what is verified

IREN’s chief operating officer, David Shaw, on the Childress campus: “You do fill it once and we’re bringing water from outside the county. We’re not using Childress County water once it’s filled.” The company says the closed loop needs no daily or weekly water, that annual top-ups take “about as much water as a few houses use,” and that the fill is trucked in from outside the Greenbelt system.³⁰³²²⁸ To the McAlester News-Capital it said the same of Kiowa: less than one percent of on-site tank capacity a year, “roughly equivalent to the annual water consumption of just five average households,” local supply understood to be sufficient, no pipeline from any lake, and trucking if local water falls short, “exactly what we’re doing for our data center campus in Childress, Texas, which is a water-constrained area.”³⁴

None of it is verified by anyone but the company. No third party has measured the campus’s draw, no permit records it, and the company’s own annual report lists “water restrictions” and “expectations regarding availability and pricing of electricity or water” among the risks to its business.¹¹ In April 2026 the chairman of the Texas Public Utility Commission told a House committee it is “critical to have a clear picture of how much water data centers use”; one developer at the same hearing put a single building’s fill at up to 30,000 gallons.³³ The absence of any water complaint or enforcement action against IREN at Childress in the reachable record is a real absence. It is not a measurement.

What is in the loop, and where it goes

Horizon 1 at Childress is direct-to-chip liquid cooling with chillers, dry coolers and coolant distribution units; heat leaves through the air, so nothing evaporates and nothing is discharged in normal operation.³⁸³⁴ IREN says the coolant is sealed in the loop and contains no PFAS.³⁴ What the fluid is, it has not said. The industry standard for such loops is about one part propylene glycol to three parts deionised water with a corrosion-inhibitor package and sometimes a biocide; propylene glycol is the food-grade one, and ethylene glycol, which is toxic, persists in some plant loops. Drained coolant and flush water go to labelled containers and a licensed waste handler, not to the ground or a sewer, and Texas classifies them under its industrial waste rules.³⁹ The fluorinated fluids drawing objections elsewhere belong to two-phase immersion cooling, a different design; the residual PFAS in any liquid-cooled build is in tubing, gaskets and coatings.³⁹ Who takes the drained fluid at Childress, and what the fill is made of, is unanswered on the record.

Oklahoma’s new law, and the gap in it

Senate Bill 259, effective 1 November 2026, bars groundwater permits for evaporative cooling and requires a data center seeking a permit to show a low-consumption design such as a closed loop.³⁷ A data center that buys its water from a utility needs no permit and reports nothing. The director of the Oklahoma Water Resources Board, Julie Cunningham: “If a data center wants to purchase water, they can do that, and they do not get a permit.”³⁶ The Project Plan does not say where Kiowa’s water would come from, and the town’s own raw-water source is not established in any public page read for this file.¹

Noise and generators

IREN says it chose the Kiowa site partly for “the existing ambient noise from the highway and power plant,” that natural ridges would buffer sound, that about ten percent of the 2,000 acres would carry buildings, that backup generators “are only intended to operate during emergencies,” and that it would “comply with all environmental regulations, including any air permitting requirements.”³⁴ No generator count, noise limit or permit is in the plan. Nothing noise-related appears in the Childress record read for this file.

A comparison is only worth publishing if it can surprise the person who commissioned it, so here is the part that argues against the simple version of this story.

The Oklahoma structure is better drafted than the Texas one. It is not a naive giveaway. It ties the abatement to megawatts actually energized and recalculates it every year. It sets a floor under the county’s revenue instead of relying on assessed value alone. It counts business personal property — the servers, the racks, the networking gear, the most valuable and most mobile thing on the site — regardless of ownership or leasing structure, and forbids the company from structuring around it. It gives the county audit rights and drops the company to the lowest abatement tier if it fails to certify its megawatts. Childress County got none of that. Childress County got a hundred percent off for ten years and $1,667 per megawatt.¹⁶

So the case against this deal is not that Pittsburg County’s lawyers were careless. It is narrower and harder to answer: the parts that protect the county are the parts labelled illustrative, and the parts that bind the county are the parts that are already definite. Eighty-five percent is definite. Twenty-five years is definite. The 1 January 2026 base value is definite. The right to terminate on ninety days’ notice is definite. The fifteen million dollars is an example.¹

Which is why the sequence matters. Those five taxing-entity signatures — the schools, the county, the health department, the technology center, the library system — are the county’s entire leverage, and they are spent the moment the plan is adopted. Childress County put its numbers in the contract first. Pittsburg County is being asked to adopt the framework and negotiate the numbers afterwards.¹⁶

Stated plainly, so nobody mistakes an absence of data for an absence of risk.

• Who owns Emerald ProjectCoDocumented by officer and address, not by ownershipThe certified Oklahoma qualification puts the corporation’s principal place of business at IREN’s Childress campus and is signed by Will Roberts as President, the name of IREN’s co-founder and co-chief executive, so the connection is on the record. Who holds the 1,000 shares is not, and IREN’s annual report does not list the company among its significant subsidiaries. The Secretary of State was written in as registered agent on the qualification form and replaced by Corporation Service Company on 30 July 2026. A name search for “IREN” in an aggregator snapshot of the Oklahoma register returns one inactive foreign corporation, IREN Two, Inc. (filing 2300325032), with nothing tying it to IREN Limited. The parent is a question for the company, not a finding.²⁴²⁵
• The tabling of the resolutionNot filedThe county’s published notice set hearings for 8 and 22 June 2026, the second being the opportunity to be heard before any votes.³ On 22 June the Board tabled the two incentive districts so the review committee could look over new cost estimates.³⁵ No adopted Emerald resolution appears on the county’s resolutions page, and the measure remains unadopted — but the minutes recording the vote to table are not among the documents published there.
• The Childress tract boundariesNot published as GISThe three tracts are described by metes and bounds in the county’s Exhibit A and total about 576 acres, matching IREN’s published figure. The individual tract lines are not available as survey data and are not drawn on the map.
• The Clarendon College Phase 2 paymentNot readThe College’s Phase 3 payment of $145 per MW per year was read from the executed agreement. Its Phase 2 agreement exists in the county’s repository but was not opened for this file.
• Any renegotiated Oklahoma termsNot publicIf the Project Plan has been revised since the June 2026 hearings, no revised version appears on the county’s resolutions page. The Economic Development Agreement and the Tax Incentive Agreement do not exist in public form at all.
• State-level incentivesOutside this fileTexas and Oklahoma both operate separate state data-center programmes. Whether either site receives state sales-tax or ad valorem benefits on top of the county deals is not established here.
• Whether Texas law allowed a school abatement at allNot verifiedChildress ISD kept its full taxable value while the county abated, and the county paid the schools a separate Education Program Payment instead. Whether Texas law positively forbids a school district from granting a Chapter 312 abatement was not confirmed for this file — the statute site could not be retrieved in readable form. The observable outcome is sourced; the legal reason for it is a question for counsel.
• IREN’s share of the Childress figuresNot separableEvery Childress measure in section 07 is a county total. Lancium holds abatements covering ten permitted phases and Greenalia operates abated wind and solar in the same county. Nothing in the public data attributes population, employment, wage or tax-base movement to any one of them.
• Power and waterNot in any county documentNeither county document states who pays for grid upgrades or what water is drawn and from where. IREN says it will pay all connection and transmission costs and that the loop tops up at under five households a year; neither is in the plan, no third party has measured the Childress draw, and under SB 259 purchased utility water is unpermitted and unreported. Kiowa’s own raw-water source is not established in any page read for this file. Section 10 sets out what is known.³⁴³⁶³⁷

Numbered markers throughout this file link here. Every figure is traceable to a filed document, an executed agreement, a company disclosure or a state corporate registry; section 10 also rests on local reporting from the Texas Panhandle and Oklahoma and on state agency statements, cited by outlet and date, and says so where it does. The county documents on both sides are scanned images without a text layer; they were read page by page, and page and section numbers are given wherever a figure is quoted.

1. [1]

   Emerald ProjectCo Data Center Project Economic Development Project Plan

   Pittsburg County, Oklahoma · prepared with Floyd & Driver, PLLC · recommended 21 Apr 2026 · 27 pp.

   Definitions and Base Value; two Incentive Districts over ~2,000 acres two miles south of Kiowa; twenty-five-year Term (§ 8.5); activation conditions and the 1 Jan 2028 floor (§ 8.2–8.3); the abatement scale to 85% (§ 8.6); Introductory and Stabilized Periods (§ 8.8); Tax Incentive Agreement within 60 days and the 90-day termination right (§ 9.5); estimated project costs of ~$25bn per phase, $11.8bn of it servers, racks and networking equipment (§ 10.1); business personal property included regardless of ownership (§ 11.3); the taxing-entity distribution table (§ 12.1); Community Betterment Payments (§ 12.2); PILOT calculation (§ 12.3); per-phase revenue estimates (§ 12.4); the “minimal” employment finding and 40 ongoing jobs per phase (§ 12.5); megawatt certification and audit rights (§ 13.2); Exhibit B legal descriptions; blank Exhibits C and D.

   plan (copy) · pittsburg.okcounties.org → project_plan_-_final_1875.pdf

2. [2]

   Pittsburg County Statutory Review Committee — recommendation of 21 April 2026

   Filed with the County Clerk · 5 pp. · the Project Plan is Exhibit “A” to this recommendation

   The committee’s statutory findings under 62 O.S. § 855 and its unanimous recommendation that the Commissioners approve the Project Plan and establish the districts; the finding that the private investment would more likely than not not occur without them.

   recommendation (copy) · pittsburg.okcounties.org → scan0637_1874.pdf

3. [3]

   Notice of public hearings — Pittsburg County legal advertisement

   File-stamped 18 May 2026, Hope Trammell, County Clerk · 3 pp.

   Official project and district names; the Local Development Act citation; hearings on 8 and 22 June 2026 at the Southeast Expo Center; the ~2,000-acre area; phase legal descriptions in Sections 25–27 and 33–35, T3N R13E; Exhibit “A” incentive district map.

   notice (copy) · pittsburg.okcounties.org → publication_for_public_hearings_1870.pdf

4. [4]

   Childress County tax abatement records — document index

   Childress County Commissioners Court, Texas · retrieved 4 Sep 2026

   The county’s public repository of every executed agreement, amendment and statutory notice for the Iris Energy / IREN project and for the separate Clarendon College agreements.

   childresstx.us → tax-abatements

5. [5]

   Tax Abatement Agreement — Childress County and Iris Energy, Phase 1

   Executed 14 Mar 2022 · first amended 11 Sep 2023 · 30 pp.

   The five Delaware corporations comprising the Owner and their joint and several liability; 100 MW minimum capacity and ~$197.5m investment; 100% abatement for ten calendar years; the $1,250-per-MW payment in lieu of taxes and the separate $50,000 annual Education Program Payment; the twenty-year term for improvements; the ten-full-time-equivalent-jobs representation.

   childresstx.us → “US IE Hardware- Phase 1”

6. [6]

   Amended and Restated Tax Abatement Agreement — Childress County, Phase 2

   Considered 14 Oct 2024 · Iris Energy Reinvestment Zone #2 · 26 pp.

   300 MW minimum and ~$592.5m investment; 100% abatement for ten calendar years and the express bar on extending beyond ten; the $75,000 + $1,250-per-MW payment; commercial operation by 31 Dec 2025 with a one-year extension for $25,000; improvements in place twenty years; recapture less payments as the county’s sole remedy; the ten-jobs and $500,000 tax-roll representations; notices to Will Roberts at Level 21, 60 Margaret Street, Sydney.

   childresstx.us → “Amended and Restated Phase 2 (County)”

7. [7]

   Amended and Restated Tax Abatement Agreement — Childress County, Phase 3

   Considered 14 Oct 2024 · 26 pp.

   200 MW minimum and ~$605m investment; 100% abatement for ten calendar years; the $50,000 + $1,625-per-MW payment; commercial operation by 31 Dec 2026 with a one-year extension for $25,000; the identical ten-jobs representation.

   childresstx.us → “Amended and Restated Phase 3 (County)”

8. [8]

   Amended and Restated Tax Abatement Agreement — Clarendon College, Phase 3

   Considered 14 Oct 2024 · 26 pp.

   That a second taxing entity negotiated its own instrument; the College’s payment in lieu of taxes of $145 per megawatt per year for ten years.

   childresstx.us → “Amended and Restated Phase 3 (Clarendon College)”

9. [9]

   Notice of Tax Abatement Consideration — 14 October 2024

   Childress County Commissioners Court · Kimberly Jones, County Judge · 3 pp.

   Creation of Iris Energy Reinvestment Zone #2 and the reason for it; the total estimated cost of the improvements of approximately $1,400,000,000; the Exhibit “A” legal descriptions of Tracts I, II and III and the parcel map showing IE US Development Holdings 3 ownership.

   childresstx.us → “30 Day Notice Amended and Restated Agreement with Iris Energy (October 14, 2024)”

10. [10]

    Notice of Tax Abatement Consideration — 10 August 2026

    Childress County Commissioners Court · 4 pp.

    The Second Amendment permitting partial assignment to an IREN affiliate; Phase 1 improvements of approximately $197,500,000; Exhibit “A” giving the reinvestment zone as 416.083 acres out of Section 421, Abstract 208, Block H, W&NW RY Co. Surveys; the site map showing the ~420-acre site, the project footprint and the 345 kV line.

    childresstx.us → “30 day Notice- IE US Hardware (Second Amendment)”

11. [11]

    IREN Limited — Annual Report on Form 10-K, fiscal year ended 30 June 2026

    Filed 27 Aug 2026 · accession 0001878848-26-000052 · CIK 0001878848

    Unrestricted cash of $5,895.6m and restricted cash of $1,723.9m; $4,742.8m raised from share issuance and $6,299.6m from convertible notes; the convertible note coupon; the Kiowa site at 1,600 MW; Childress and the Horizon deployment; Exhibit 21.1’s seven significant subsidiaries.

    sec.gov → iren-20260630.htm

12. [12]

    Form 8-K and Exhibit 99.1 — IREN FY26 results release

    Filed 27 Aug 2026 · accession 0001878848-26-000051

    Contract pricing: “Recent 3-year contracts >$20m revenue per MW (IT), representing a ~2 year payback”; footnote 3, which estimates that payback on “capital expenditure for GPUs and ancillaries divided by contracted revenue less estimated direct costs”; discussions at about $25 million per MW; 2026 capacity described as largely sold out.

    sec.gov → irenreportsfy26results.htm

13. [13]

    IREN corporate website — Childress and Oklahoma data centre pages

    Retrieved 4 Sep 2026

    Childress: 750 MW total capacity, 576 acres, described as a freehold site with on-site substations owned by IREN and dual diverse fiber. Oklahoma: 1,600 MW total capacity across 2,000 acres.

    iren.com → data-centers/childress · /oklahoma

14. [14]

    Bureau of Land Management — National PLSS CadNSDI cadastral survey

    PLSS Section layer · township OK170030N0130E0 · retrieved 4 Sep 2026

    Section geometry for Sections 25, 26, 27, 33, 34 and 35 of Township 3 North, Range 13 East, Indian Meridian — the sections named in Exhibit B of the Project Plan. Each returns close to 640 acres, and the Phase 1 aliquot parts were computed from these polygons by regular subdivision.

    gis.blm.gov → BLM_Natl_PLSS_CadNSDI MapServer

15. [15]

    Original Texas Land Survey — statewide land grid

    Railroad Commission version · retrieved 4 Sep 2026

    Survey polygon geometry for Abstract A-208, Block H, Section 421, W&NW RR Co. in Childress County — the survey named in the county’s Exhibit “A” — together with the surrounding survey grid drawn for context.

    services1.arcgis.com → Original_Texas_Land_Survey FeatureServer

16. [16]

    US Census Bureau — TIGERweb road centrelines

    Transportation service, secondary and local road layers · retrieved 4 Sep 2026

    Road alignments on both plans: US 69, State Highway 131 and Doyle Road at Kiowa; US 287, FM 1033, County Road Z, County Road AA and County Road K5 at Childress — the last four matching the roads labelled on Childress County’s own site map.

    tigerweb.geo.census.gov → TIGERweb Transportation MapServer

17. [17]

    US Census Bureau — American Community Survey, 5-year estimates

    Tables B25064, B25077, B19013, B01003 · Childress County and all 254 Texas counties · vintages 2015–2024 · retrieved 4 Sep 2026

    Median gross rent, median home value, median household income and population for Childress County with their published margins of error; the same measures for every Texas county, used to place Childress in the statewide distribution. Significance testing uses the ACS 90% margins.

    data.census.gov → ACSDT5Y2024.B25064, g=0500000US48075

18. [18]

    US Census Bureau — County Population Estimates, vintage 2024

    co-est2024-alldata.csv · retrieved 4 Sep 2026

    Annual population estimates for Childress County 2020–2024 and the components of change: net migration of +164 (2021), +78 (2022), −62 (2023) and −59 (2024), against natural change of −29, −27, −17 and −18.

    www2.census.gov → co-est2024-alldata.csv

19. [19]

    US Census Bureau — Building Permits Survey, county annual files

    co2018a.txt through co2025a.txt · retrieved 4 Sep 2026

    Housing units authorized by building permit in Childress County: zero in every year 2018 through 2025, across all structure types. Coverage check: 188 of the 223 Texas counties in the 2024 file reported at least one authorized unit, including Donley (3), Dallam (5) and Hardeman (1).

    www2.census.gov → econ/bps/County

20. [20]

    Bureau of Labor Statistics — Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages

    Annual averages, area 48075 (Childress County), 2018–2025 · retrieved 4 Sep 2026

    Total covered employment and average weekly wage; employment and wages for utilities (NAICS 22), construction (NAICS 23), information (NAICS 51) and retail trade; and the absence of any reported establishment in data processing and hosting (NAICS 518) in any year. Some small-county cells are suppressed for disclosure and are marked as such rather than read as zero.

    data.bls.gov → QCEW 2025, area 48075.csv

21. [21]

    Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts — County and School District Rates and Levies

    County and School District Reports of Property Value, 2021–2025 · retrieved 4 Sep 2026

    Childress County market value, taxable value for general and road funds, total county tax rate and calculated levy for each year; and the same market and taxable values for Childress Independent School District. The gap between market and taxable value includes homestead, over-65, disabled-veteran and agricultural or open-space valuations as well as abatements, and is described that way in the text.

    comptroller.texas.gov → property-tax/rates

22. [22]

    68 O.S. § 2902 — Manufacturing Facilities: Exemption from Ad Valorem Tax

    Oklahoma Statutes, via the Oklahoma State Courts Network · retrieved 4 Sep 2026

    The five-year ad valorem exemption and the categories that qualify for it, including establishments defined under NAICS Industry Group 5182 subject to an out-of-state revenue test; the payroll and investment thresholds; and the placed-in-service deadline of 31 December 2021 in the paragraph dealing specifically with U.S. Industry Number 518210.

    oscn.net → CiteID 439609

23. [23]

    Oklahoma Tax Commission — 2026 Ad Valorem Annual Report, Exempt Manufacturing Reimbursements

    Ad Valorem Division · claims against the Ad Valorem Reimbursement Fund under 62 O.S. § 193 for tax year 2025 · 2.7 MB

    That the state reimburses counties and other local taxing jurisdictions for revenue lost to the § 2902 exemption; the current list of qualifying categories, including NAICS Industry Number 5182 with an eighty percent out-of-state revenue test, and the Commission’s statement that a NAICS classification alone does not establish eligibility; and Pittsburg County’s present claim of $22,244 for Magnera fka Pliant LLC.

    report (copy) · oklahoma.gov → ADVAR-2026.pdf

24. [24]

    Delaware Division of Corporations — entity records for Emerald ProjectCo Inc. (file 10276559) and the five Delaware subsidiaries in IREN’s Exhibit 21.1 (files 6066236, 6401015, 6579372, 6666496 and 10520910)

    Read through the GovFiles registry snapshot, dated 29 Jun – 26 Jul 2026 · retrieved 4 Sep 2026 · the Division’s own search is the authority

    Emerald ProjectCo Inc.’s incorporation on 29 July 2025, its file number, entity type, registered agent and registered address; the formation dates and the same agent and address on each of the five Delaware subsidiaries IREN lists; the absence of any officer, shareholder or parent in every record.

    icis.corp.delaware.gov → Entity Search

25. [25]

    Oklahoma Secretary of State — the certified record for Emerald ProjectCo Inc., filing 2313901183

    Certified copies and certificates issued 4 Sep 2026 under order 78346070003, published on this site (section 09) · the live entity record read the same day · the IREN Two, Inc. hit (filing 2300325032) is from the GovFiles registry snapshot dated 23 Jun 2026, which the aggregator marks as partial for Oklahoma

    The Certificate of Qualification of 16 December 2025 (document 74120930002): principal place of business at 620 FM 1033, Childress, Texas; the stated Oklahoma business; assets of $21,100 and liabilities of $1,000; 1,000 common shares at $0.01 par and $10 of authorised capital; $187,000,000 declared as the maximum investment in Oklahoma for the fiscal year; the Secretary of State named as registered agent; the signatures of Will Roberts, President, and Jason Date, Secretary; the attached Delaware Certificate of Good Standing of 2 December 2025. The Certificate of Authority of the same day. The Appointment of Registered Agent of 30 July 2026 (document 77756320002) naming Corporation Service Company, signed William Roberts. The information printout, Certificate of Good Standing and two Certificates of Fact of 4 September 2026, and the certified-copies certificate listing the two filings as the complete file.

    sos.ok.gov → Business Entities → Search

26. [26]

    BC Registries — company records for IE CA 5 Holdings Ltd. (BC1310638) and IE CA Leasing Ltd. (BC1446682), via OrgBook BC

    The Province of British Columbia’s public registry service · retrieved 4 Sep 2026

    Registration numbers, registration dates (16 June 2021 and 27 October 2023) and active status of the two British Columbia subsidiaries in IREN’s Exhibit 21.1.

    orgbook.gov.bc.ca

27. [27]

    Water Data for Texas — Greenbelt Lake reservoir record

    Texas Water Development Board · retrieved 4 Sep 2026

    Percent full, storage and elevation on 4 September 2026 and the same day in 2025; conservation capacity of 59,968 acre-feet.

    waterdatafortexas.org → reservoirs/greenbelt

28. [28]

    NewsChannel 10 (KFDA), Amarillo — Childress and Greenbelt drought reports

    “City of Childress moves to Stage 4 of Drought Contingency Plan” (11 Apr 2025) · “Greenbelt Municipal & Industrial Water Authority, City of Childress provide update on water issues” (13 Jun 2025) · “IREN continues developing data center campus in Childress” (18 May 2026)

    The Stage 4 trigger elevation and the 40 percent cutback request; the lake at about ten percent; the $18 million well field and its timeline; IREN’s statement that fill water is trucked from outside the Greenbelt system and top-ups take “about as much water as a few houses use.”

    newschannel10.com → 11 Apr 2025 · 13 Jun 2025 · 18 May 2026

29. [29]

    The Clarendon Enterprise (Clarendon Live) — Greenbelt well project and the Lancium proposal

    “Regulations slow down Greenbelt water project” (15 Apr 2026) · “Greenbelt moves forward with Lancium water proposal” (26 Aug 2026)

    The reservoir at seven to eight percent; groundwater about half of supply; pipeline completion moved to November 2027 after six months lost; the board’s vote to proceed with Lancium, the two-year term at no charge, up to a million gallons a day of raw water, the Blaine aquifer study and the early-2027 target.

    clarendonlive.com → 15 Apr 2026 · 26 Aug 2026

30. [30]

    KAMR/KCIT, MyHighPlains.com — Lancium, IREN and the moratorium discussions

    “Data center company Lancium proposes temporary water supply to help Childress drought” (Aug 2026) · “Officials talk Iren Data Center in Childress” (2026) · “City of Clarendon considers emergency pause on data center development” (Jun 2026)

    Lancium’s wells, treatment plant and 16.5-mile pipeline and its officer’s statement that none of the water is for its own use; David Shaw’s statements on filling the Childress loop once with water from outside the county, on 170 full-time and about 2,000 construction workers; the reservoir’s all-time low and Stage 4 across the member towns since April 2025; moratorium discussions in Clarendon, Childress and Amarillo and Quanah’s meter proposal.

    myhighplains.com → Lancium water supply · Officials talk Iren Data Center · Clarendon emergency pause

31. [31]

    High Plains Pundit — “Data center company proposes new water supply for Childress amid Stage 4 drought”

    19 Aug 2026

    The hospital chief executive’s statement on dialysis, chemotherapy, surgeries and deliveries; a farmer’s “false narrative” caution; the first-quarter 2027 target.

    highplainspundit.com → 19 Aug 2026

32. [32]

    ABC7 Amarillo (KVII) — “IREN says Childress data center expansion brings jobs while limiting water use”

    3 Jun 2026

    David Shaw: “we fill the system. We don’t use local water”; about 2,500 on construction and 150 in operations.

    abc7amarillo.com → 3 Jun 2026

33. [33]

    Inside Climate News — “Texas Data Center Developers Play Offense on Water, Claiming Huge Cuts in Usage”

    Arcelia Martin · 10 Apr 2026

    The Public Utility Commission chairman’s statement to the House Committee on State Affairs; Skybox’s figure of up to 30,000 gallons to charge one building’s loop; Lancium’s 11,000 gallons a day at Childress against a proposed million a day returned to the water authority; Senate Bill 6.

    insideclimatenews.org → 10 Apr 2026

34. [34]

    McAlester News-Capital — “Q&A with an Iren representative: What to know about the proposed data center”

    7 Jun 2026

    The closed loop and the five-household figure; less than one percent of tank capacity a year; sufficient local supply and trucking as the fallback, with Childress as the precedent; no lake pipeline; coolant sealed in the loop with heat dispersed through air; no PFAS coolants; backup generators for emergencies only; ambient noise, ridges and the ten percent building footprint; air permitting; IREN paying all grid connection and transmission costs.

    mcalesternews.com → 7 Jun 2026

35. [35]

    KJRH, Tulsa — “Commissioners put brakes on incentives for hyperscale data center”

    22 Jun 2026 hearing

    That the Board tabled the two incentive districts on 22 June 2026 so the review committee could look over new cost estimates; the $24 million annual tax estimate; power from PSO; the ten percent building footprint.

    kjrh.com → 22 Jun 2026

36. [36]

    Investigate Midwest — “A loophole leaves Oklahoma data center water consumption largely untracked”

    14 Jul 2026

    That a data center buying water from a utility needs no permit, in the words of the Oklahoma Water Resources Board’s director; Google’s Pryor plant at 1.1 billion gallons a year; a legislator’s plan to close the gap.

    investigatemidwest.org → 14 Jul 2026

37. [37]

    Oklahoma House of Representatives — “Lawmakers mark signing of landmark data center protections”

    6 Aug 2026 · HB 2992 signed 11 May, SB 259 signed 20 May 2026

    Senate Bill 259’s effective date of 1 November 2026, its bar on groundwater for evaporative cooling and its low-consumption showing; House Bill 2992, the Data Center Customer Ratepayer Protection Act.

    okhouse.gov → news-20260806_2

38. [38]

    mgrid — “IREN invests $300 million to build 75 MW direct-to-chip liquid-cooled AI data center at Childress, Texas”

    11 Mar 2025

    Direct-to-chip cooling with chillers, dry coolers and coolant distribution units; 200 kW racks; reduced chiller demand at higher inlet temperatures.

    mgrid.org → 11 Mar 2025

39. [39]

    Industry guidance on direct-to-chip coolant and its disposal

    Dober, “PG 25 coolant for data centers” · Schneider Electric, “What coolant should you use for data center liquid cooling?” (14 Aug 2026) · WRAL, “As AI data centers expand, new cooling chemicals raise PFAS concerns” (25 Aug 2026)

    The PG25 composition of about 25 percent propylene glycol in deionised water with an inhibitor package; disposal through a licensed waste handler; ethylene glycol persisting in some plant loops; fluorinated fluids belonging to two-phase immersion designs; residual PFAS in tubing, gaskets and coatings.

    dober.com → PG 25 coolant · blog.se.com → 14 Aug 2026 · wral.com → 25 Aug 2026

40. [40]

    Pittsburg County Clerk — the recorded instruments themselves, and the counties’ index

    Produced by Hope Trammell, County Clerk, on an Open Records Act request in two orders · 11 Sep 2026, 23 instruments naming Emerald ProjectCo, 99 pages, certified · 14 Sep 2026, 15 instruments naming Black Mountain Energy Storage, 107 pages · the Atoka County instrument from the public index, read 8 Sep 2026

    Every row of the register above, and the documents behind it. The recording date, instrument number, book and page, grantor, grantee and legal description come from the index; the document type, the documentary stamp and therefore the price come from the instruments themselves, which were bought at the counter for $104.00 and are published here in full. An earlier version of this page rested on the index alone and said so — that the images were sold by the page and had not been bought, so nothing rested on the wording inside any document. They have now been bought, and the wording, the consideration and the full legal descriptions are in the record. The second order, of 14 September, adds the Land Office leases, the Spess waiver of surface rights and the First Financial mortgage — none of which the Emerald-only search could reach. The one instrument recorded in Atoka County, 2026-029011, was not ordered and is still index-only; its row carries no price and no copy.

    The request and what it cost → · the first production, 99pp → · the second, 107pp → · okcountyrecords.com →

41. [41]

    68 O.S. § 3201 — documentary stamp tax: imposition of tax, definitions

    Oklahoma Statutes, Title 68, p. 1353 · verbatim extract retrieved 11 Sep 2026 · with § 3202, Exemptions

    The rate that turns a documentary stamp into a price: “seventy-five cents ($0.75) for each Five Hundred Dollars ($500.00) of the consideration or any fractional part thereof.” Also § 3201(B), that the tax “is limited to conveyances of realty sold and does not apply to other conveyances,” and § 3202(3), exempting deeds which “without additional consideration, confirm, correct, modify or supplement a deed previously recorded” — between them, why fifteen of the twenty-three instruments carry no stamp at all.

    Oklahoma Legislature — complete Title 68 →