Russia’s third-largest oil producer, Gazpromneft, has partnered with Swiss mining company BitRiver ($ BTC) to use additional resources to mine the flagship cryptocurrency.
According to the note St. Petersburg International Economic ForumGazpromneft supplies BitRiver energy to data centers set up by the latter, located either in new oil fields for which no transportation infrastructure has been established, or in remote locations where transportation costs are too high.
Igor Runets was the founder and CEO of BitRiver borrowed saying:
Over the next two years, BitRiver plans to implement projects to create its own data centers for energy-intensive computing with scales up to 2 [gigawatts]including [petroleum gas]which also offers high and stable power consumption,
BitRiver has been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department’s foreign financial control agency because the company is helping Russia “finance its natural resources.” BitRiver has called the sanctions unfair and anti-competitive before announcing its plans to sue the U.S. government.
The partnership will become part of a broader trend in which oil companies take advantage of the extraction of cryptocurrencies to avoid wasting methane gas in flaring practices. ExxonMobil (XOM) is said to be considering a similar strategy to some of its oil lovers, while Middle Eastern oil producers Abu Dhabi and Oman have taken stakes in Crusoe Energy for the same purpose.
ConocoPhillips, an oil and gas giant with revenue of $ 18 billion for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020, has started Bitcoin’s mining fuel business by supplying gas to a cryptocurrency mining company in the Bakken area of North Dakota.
Although the company itself does not engage in BTC mining, it sells gas that would otherwise be burned to Bitcoin miners owned and operated by a third party.
The move is part of ConocoPhillips ’initiative to reduce the burning of excess gas, known as flaring, to zero by 2030. The company is reportedly publishing reports of its efforts to divest flaring in major production segments.
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h/t – CryptoGlobe