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Exxon Weighs Taking Gas-to-Bitcoin Pilot to Four Countries (bloomberg.com) 60

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Exxon Mobil is running a pilot program using excess natural gas that would otherwise be burned off from North Dakota oil wells to power cryptocurrency-mining operations and is considering doing the same at other sites around the globe, Bloomberg News reported, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: The oil giant has an agreement with Crusoe Energy Systems to take gas from an oil well pad in the Bakken shale basin to power mobile generators used to run Bitcoin mining servers on site, said the people, who asked to not be named because the information isn't public. The pilot project, which launched in January 2021 and expanded in July, uses up 18 million cubic feet of gas per month that would have otherwise been burned off -- or flared -- because there aren't enough pipelines. Exxon, the largest U.S. oil producer, is considering similar pilots in Alaska, the Qua Iboe Terminal in Nigeria, Argentina's Vaca Muerta shale field, Guyana and Germany, one of the people said.
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Exxon Weighs Taking Gas-to-Bitcoin Pilot to Four Countries More

Exxon Weighs Taking Gas-to-Bitcoin Pilot to Four Countries

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  • The energy companies mining is a bad thing (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Kremmy ( 793693 ) on Friday March 25, 2022 @02:31PM (#62389651)
    This whole trend of energy companies using the fuel they would normally burn off to mine cryptocurrency, it's literally them taking the power they burn rather than distribute and using it to generate cash flow in a way other than selling the fuel. While fuel prices are starting to rocket.
    • I was happy to learn of an EU proposal to ban expensive proof-of-work crypto. They've backed away from that broad proposal, but are still considering to apply it more narrowly.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shanen ( 462549 )

      Just shows they are too EVIL to think of ways to use that energy. Of course the bastards will claim that it isn't profitable, but the ugly truth is that reducing the supply increases their profits. And they aren't interested in any of that crap about small honest profits. They demand OBSCENE and YUGE profits.

      I stopped doing business with Exxon about 40 years ago. Obviously didn't help. Still one of the most stinking EVIL companies ever created. And not surprised that Exxon likes this scam, too. I'm sure Exx

    • They don't have a way to transport it based on the summary

      The pilot project, which launched in January 2021 and expanded in July, uses up 18 million cubic feet of gas per month that would have otherwise been burned off -- or flared -- because there aren't enough pipelines

      • Seriously? The many ways to transport gas. A pipeline is just one of them. You can also store gas. You can fuck off now.

        • Yes, but those ways all require expense - and it's hard to justify that. Even when prices are high, there is no assurance that they will stay that way - by the time the pipeline is finished it may well cost more to run that the value of the gas it can transport.

    • It's natural gas that has always been flared off because there's no economical way to capture and sell it on the market. This method of using it to fuel generators that power bitcoin miners provides an economical way to capitalize on the natural gas, which lowers the cost of the oil mining operations. Lowering the cost of oil mining allows more oil to be brought to market and puts downward pressure on the price.
      • RTFA:

        "...that would have otherwise been burned off -- or flared -- because there aren't enough pipelines. "

        Jesus tap dancing Christ, are people this fucking stupid.
        • In all these years of mining for oil and encountering unwanted natural gas that has, until now, simply been released or burned off, they haven't tried to find a way to capitalize on that? Really? You think the engineers at Exxon are that fucking stupid.
    • omg... you can't be serious... hoarding gas for bitcoin mining.. causing global supply and futures markets to go up.

    • It's a lot easier to export the data than the fuel. They already capture and sell the gas where it's profitable to do so.

  • This needs to be fucking stopped NOW (Score:3)

    by Puls4r ( 724907 ) on Friday March 25, 2022 @02:31PM (#62389653)
    So a gas company that is damaging the environment to remove fossil fuel is going to contribute to environmental damage by BURNING that limited fossil fuel resource to generate a non-regulated pseudo-currency.

    Fuck exxon. They need to be regulated HARD.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      They are already burning it. What they will be doing is to burn it in a generating plant to produce power for Bitcoin mining.

      I don't know why they didn't produce power and put it on the grid some time ago. But it's possible that regulations made that uneconomical. But a private contract with an end user got around this.

      • It's amazing to see the knee-jerk reactions to the use of a waste resource to power bitcoin miners, but the oil rigs are in remote areas without infrastructure to allow for selling the electricity on the grid. It would be cost-prohibitive to build that for that purpose.
        • It's amazing to see morons who don't bother to read the article. It stated "because there aren't enough pipelines."

          It's a matter of being able to transport the gas. If they built more pipeline or storage they would not need to burn it.

          Think before you post and look like a fucking moron.

          • Why the fuck haven't they built it, instead choosing to burn it off?

            Seriously, fucking think about it for just a second before posting like you know more than the engineers who are mining the oil in remote, inaccessible locations.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by shanen ( 462549 )

              I know your question was rhetorical, but I'll reiterate my two points:

              (1) Big profits, not small profits (and without any concern about the honesty of the profits).

              (2) Reduced supply increases prices (which is actually crossing the line into price fixing).

              • Has Exxon just this moment discovered that they can reduce supply to increase the price? Wow, what an amazing discovery that must be for them! I bet they wish they had thought of it back when oil was $40/barrel.

                None of that is relevant to why they don't just capture this abundant resource instead of burning it off, which is at least a little better than just releasing it into the atmosphere like they used to.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by shanen ( 462549 )

                  Did you think my tone sounded hostile? But now I can't really tell if yours is. I actually think we are in substantive agreement on the issues, though maybe we would have to negotiate on the parameters of what is a "reasonable" level of greed.

                  For example, I think it quite reasonable to consider not producing from a well if one of the side effects is going to be wasting (AKA burning off) energy that is currently in an "inconvenient" form. Later on the prices may change, or maybe the technology will improve.

                  • I took your claims of market manipulation as hostile, though I'm no particular fan of Exxon. Energy production is necessarily going to happen, whether it's in America, in Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela, or some other place, and most existing wells appear to be profitable in the range of $60/barrel. Most new build-outs seem to require higher prices, but we are talking about flare gas from existing wells.

                    Civilization depends on oil and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Preventing production

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by shanen ( 462549 )

                      Hmm... I think it would make more sense to leave the expensive stuff in the ground as a kind of emergency reserve, where the emergency can partly be defined by the price increases that also pay for the cost of extracting it. But that's not how things work in profit-driven corporate cancers like Exxon, where growth has become the objective and the planning horizons are extremely short. The executive decision makers are always in a rush to earn the bonuses. NOW.

                      On the longer term, your suggestions sound good.

          • They have not built more pipelines because liberal moron protestors and Democrats block them every chance they get.

            • They have not built more pipelines because liberal moron protestors and Democrats block them every chance they get.

              Headline says Four Countries, and what do cross-country international pipelines have to do with it? For example, in Texas that stuff is flared off too.

    • They already burn it. They're just using it for something now, instead of only heating the world.

      Is there a benefit to burning over releasing for the lifetime of the gas? Or is the reason they do this because they're only penalized for releasing?

    • This is gas that they were already venting and burning. It's a smoke screen (pun not intended).

      When the cryptocurrency guys make that argument then neglect to mention that these are underperforming wells that don't make enough money to keep them open without the cryptocurrency data centers there. The wells themselves would have closed if not for the cryptocurrency data centers.

      Meaning that this is increasing emissions and climate change..
      • Absolute garbage. They have always vented or flared the natural gas because there is no economical way to capture and sell it.
    • You can't mine oil without encountering small amounts of unwanted natural gas. They flare off the gas to reduce the amount of methane that is being released by the mining operations, but encountering it is unavoidable, and we can't have a civilization without oil mining. At least, not yet.

      • You can't mine oil without encountering small amounts of unwanted natural gas. They flare off the gas to reduce the amount of methane that is being released by the mining operations, but encountering it is unavoidable, and we can't have a civilization without oil mining. At least, not yet.

        https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/1... [cnbc.com]
        The team got creative by tracking down smaller customers in north and east Texas who were either “breaking the rules” or couldn’t get permits and were just wasting the gas. As Whitehead describes it, these smaller companies were often the ones that neglected regulatory compliance.

        “We were able to come in and say, ‘Hey, you’re flaring, and you shouldn’t be. You’re doing stuff that’s illegal, and you have opportunity here,

        • That's an interesting portion of the article to quote in the context of the main article that is about Exxon using their waste gas. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.
    • There are not enough pipelines to transport the gas so it is already being burned off. Blame your lord and savior Joe Biden and the Democrats who prevent them from building more pipelines because THE ENVIRONMENT! Ironic and hilarious that the result of those policies is this plan which is causing more libs to scream THE ENVIRONMENT!
  • Sounds like Exxon are really, really, really begging us to regulate them.
    • Not for nothing but out of the hundreds of things that can be powered by âfreeâ(TM) burning, crypto is the dumbest thing selected.
      • They used to just release the methane into the atmosphere, but now almost all of it is just burned off. Do you think they weren't motivated until now to find some way to capitalize on that resource?
      • Now list a hundred things that are willing to hang out in Exxon's parking lot just to use their gas.

    • Why pick on Exxon, so-called "cryptocurrency" is an immense waste of energy and hugely polluting. Abolishing those gambling tokens would be better step to reduce pollution and waste of energy.

      • There's no increase in pollution or energy consumption caused by the use of flare gas to power bitcoin miners.

        • Wrong and ignorant, the gas can be used for useful power for mankind's energy needs and lessen the need for other consumption, instead of wasted on gambling token.

          • It's being burned off into the atmosphere because it's otherwise useless. There's no magic fairy to come along and create the infrastructure you want to convert into power for things you like, so you're going to just have to get used to the fact that people are going to use it for things they want.

            • It's being burned off into the atmosphere because it's otherwise useless.

              I remember recently reading an article about a report that claimed the oil & gas industries could harvest substantial amounts of gas from leaking wells & infrastructure & that this would be profitable. The oil & gas industry isn't some modern, slick, sophisticated, innovative industry. They're very much grounded in 19th century attitudes & have corrupted their way into most governments in the world & made themselves essentially unregulatable & unaccountable. They get governments

            • Wrong and ignorant, the gas is useful, it's natural gas. Companies and countries are now building infrastructure to harness it because it is profitable to do so.

              • You can keep saying that, but it doesn't change the fact that natural gas is routinely burned off at hundreds or even thousands of wells around the world every day, all the time, because it's not economical to capture most of it and bring it to market.

                That is simply the truth. Your denial doesn't make me wrong or ignorant and it won't stop the companies from burning it off.

      • lol good guy Exxon.

  • Crypto has the distinct advantage (for the energy companies) that it will pay for the compute resources that they have to purchase and the generator they purchase/rent to make the electricity, with some extra for profit.

    So if they don't get a return (continue flaring, or..), then what else?...

    I just had a thought: distributed compute resources (colocation). For things that don't require extreme data requirements (because fiber is likely not run to the location, only minimal wireless), perhaps they can rent

  • That's what they're telling people to keep the environmentalists off their back. What's actually happening here is that low performing wells that would otherwise be shut down are being kept open because using the vented gas to mind cryptocurrency makes otherwise unprofitable Wells profitable again.

    This is increasing emissions and will have a negative impact on climate change. Don't let anyone fool you cryptocurrency is extremely bad for the environment. Yes even proof of stake. Less bad is still bad.
    • Even if it were excess gas - THEY DON'T HAVE TO FUCKING BURN IT.

      The fact that some people buy this excuse tells you how fucking stupid they are.

      There are many ways to transport gas as well as store it. Exxon Mobile chooses not to do thus because they don't want to spend the money. It's that simple.

      Wake the fuck up.
  • Narrator: And with that, the greedy humans sealed their fate.
  • So Europe is about to crash head first into a recession over wanting to do the right thing by not buy Russian energy and these arsefaces are just burning it off?
    https://www.ft.com/content/c95... [ft.com]
  • We are crying out for gas here since we started boycotting Pewtin
  • Use some of it to power compressors to liquify it and then transport it to be used for something useful, like industry. These oil companies are just so shortsighted it is unbelievable.

    • :this: exactly my thoughts as well - still Exxon will choose what's most profitable to fulfill their obligations to stock holders, will they not?

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