America’s largest oil producer is already burning natural gas and extracting bitcoin

The largest US oil producer, Exxon Mobile, plans to expand its “Gas-to-Bitcoin” pilot project to other countries. In it, the company uses excess natural gas, which would otherwise be burned, to produce electricity for mobile containers full of graphics cards and other components needed for the extraction of cryptocurrencies. The portal drew attention to the topic Bloomberg.

Oil, natural gas and cryptocurrencies

Instead of burning excess natural gas, for which there is simply no infrastructure, the company diverts natural gas to generators, which convert it into much-needed electricity.

The pilot project, which the company launched in January 2021 in Bakken, North Dakota, currently consumes 18 million cubic feet of gas per month per month that the company would otherwise simply burn. As the portal further writes FuturismExxon Mobile has an agreement with Crusoe Energy Systems, which uses the gas to power the aforementioned bitcoin containers.

According to unnamed sources, the oil giant plans to expand the pilot project to Alaska, Qua Iboe in Nigeria, the Argentine shale field of Vaca Muerta, Guyana and Germany.

According to Exxon Mobile spokeswoman Sarah Nordin, the company is constantly evaluating new technologies aimed at reducing the increase in the volume of gases burned in their operations.

However, both Exxon Mobile and Crusoe Energy Systems further refused to comment to Bloomberg on “Various rumors and speculation about the pilot project”. It is also not yet clear how much Exxon gets paid to transfer its resources to bitcoin “miners”.

However, it is certain that the gas, which would only be burned, which would literally throw a lot of money into the air and at the same time endanger the environment (combustion is not 100% and often a lot of methane gets into the air), has found its use.

In addition, according to research by Crusoe Energy Systems, this process compared to the combustion of natural gas reduced CO2 equivalent emissions by up to 63%.

Interestingly, the report comes after another major oil company, Conoco Phillips, said last month that it had launched its own pilot project to divert excess natural gas from one of its oil fields in the Bakken region of North Dakota. He also sells the gas to companies that use it to extract cryptocurrencies, the portal writes CoinDesk.