The Norwegian oil giant Equinor has entered into a partnership with the company Crusoe Energy Solutions in North Dakota in the USA, which extracts bitcoin from its data centers.
The Norwegian analysis company Arcane Research mentioned first the project, which became known from screenshots from Equinor’s intranet. It says that Equinor, instead of flaring associated gas, will sell it to Crusoe, which will then extract cryptocurrency.
Sets with gas and empty
Associated gas is natural gas that is released from the oil that is produced. In Norway, this is to be used or pumped back into the reservoir, but in the USA it is more common to burn the gas, so-called flaring.
Press spokesman Erik Haaland and Equinor. (Photo: Equinor)
Equinor spokesman Erik Haaland confirms that they have entered into a “kind of partnership” where they provide gas and land, while the computer park company is responsible for data centers and operations.
Ensures that the gas is used
– At Equinor, we look at different ways to reduce emissions and ensure efficient use of the resources we produce. In this case, a small project is carried out where we sell associated gas from oil wells to a company that then uses it to produce energy for small data centers, he says.
Haaland explains that the project so far only applies to one of the company’s many hundreds of well locations in North Dakota. The data centers are located in close proximity to some of the wells and receive efficient delivery of gas directly from them.
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– We are not involved in the actual extraction of bitcoin, but are a supplier of the gas and facilitate that the buyer can place their data centers near our facility. For us, this ensures that the gas is used and that we reduce flaring, the buyer has access to energy, and we can potentially contribute to creating a market for this gas that was not there before, says Haaland.
Equinor is paid in dollars for the gas they sell, not cryptocurrency.(Terms)Copyright Dagens Næringsliv AS and / or our suppliers. We would like you to share our cases using a link, which leads directly to our pages. Copying or other form of use of all or part of the content, can only take place with written permission or as permitted by law. For additional terms look here.
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