Event overview: On Thursday, Oracle (ORCL) shares dropped 6.1%.

Behind the decline: A large data center project in New Mexico has run into public opposition while also facing regulatory obstacles. Against this backdrop, Oracle is taking steps to contain its financial exposure to the project.

According to people familiar with the matter, Oracle has notified a subsidiary of project developer Blue Owl Capital, declaring that it is invoking the force majeure clause in its contract. In early trading Thursday, Blue Owl Capital shares fell more than 1%.

Other key information: The project, called Project Jupiter, is a core part of the large artificial intelligence infrastructure initiative jointly announced last year by Oracle, OpenAI and SoftBank. The campus in New Mexico is designed for power supply capacity of as much as 2.45 gigawatts, making it a flagship project in the current AI data center construction boom.

But the project has suffered a series of regulatory setbacks, including the rejection of a key permit; the huge electricity consumption of large data centers and their various impacts on local communities have triggered increasingly strong public protests.