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ConocoPhillips is selling extra gas to bitcoin miners in North Dakota:
Oil and gas major ConocoPhillips is in the bitcoin mining fuel business.
The company said in a statement to CNBC on Tuesday that it has one bitcoin pilot project currently operating in the Bakken, a region in North Dakota known as an important source of new oil production in the U.S.
A representative for ConocoPhillips said the company is not operating the crypto mine itself. Instead, it sells gas that would otherwise have been burned off to a bitcoin processor that is owned and managed by a third party.
[...] The push into bitcoin mining dovetails with an initiative by the oil and gas major to reduce routine flaring, or burning off extra gas, to zero by 2030.
The company has published reports about efforts to phase out the practice of routinely flaring natural gas in the "Lower 48" states, which represents the largest segment in ConocoPhillips today, based on production. It is comprised of two regions covering the Gulf Coast and Great Plains — an area that includes the Bakken.
Co-locating a bitcoin mine to an oil and gas field is a huge help toward that goal, though it won't affect the company's scope three carbon emissions, an industry term used to describe emissions that are a result of activities from assets not owned or controlled by the reporting organization.
For years, oil and gas companies have struggled with the problem of what to do when they accidentally hit a natural gas formation while drilling for oil. Whereas oil can easily be trucked out to a remote destination, gas delivery requires a pipeline. If a drilling site is right next to a pipeline, they chuck the gas in and take whatever cash the buyer on the other end is willing to pay that day. But if it's 20 miles from a pipeline, drillers often burn it off, or flare it. That is why you will typically see flames rising from oil fields.
Beyond the environmental implications of flare gas, drillers are also, in effect, burning cash.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by GlennC on Monday February 21 2022, @02:00PM (13 children)
Why don't they use the excess gas to fire up an electrical generator?
If the plant couldn't use it, surely someone would buy the electricity.
Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
(Score: 2) by owl on Monday February 21 2022, @02:31PM (10 children)
Probably because there is no electrical grid nearby to feed the power into.
This is probably one of those newer bitcoin startups that will ship and drop a shipping-container with a methane powered generator and bit-coin mining ASIC's to the location of the excess gas. So the total "need" for connection is a few hundred feet of hose/pipe to go from the well to the 'miner'.
And, the shipping-container pair generator/miner is likely using satellite internet for it's networking needs. So the only connection needed is that few hundred feet of pipe/hose.
To 'generate' and distribute the power into the grid would require one of piping the excess gas a much longer distance to a methane powered generator facility, or bringing the power grid in a long distance where it is not otherwise present. Both are more expensive costs vs. dropping a shipping container adjacent to the well head.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by stretch611 on Monday February 21 2022, @04:08PM (6 children)
Why not have a small generator (same as used above) create electricity and store it in some industrial size batteries. (The kind of batteries that the grid uses to store solar/wind power for night/calm winds)
You can the transport them to the grid.
While transport may cost a little more It is less wasteful than crypto-mining.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 21 2022, @04:21PM (4 children)
Run your business model for battery charge and transport to the grid. Go ahead and be green about it: charge up an electric semi hauling batteries of your choice, then run that semi to the grid to sell the electricity to the most profitable location you can reach from the flarestacks. I smell $1M+ for three trucks+ batteries and transfer equipment, not to mention whatever road improvements / maintenance might be necessary to support regular runs. Let's be optimistic and say you're netting 100KW of energy transfer sold wholesale at $0.05/KWh, so your gross income is $5/hr. Oops, those better be self driving, self maintaining trucks because you can't afford drivers, mechanics, liability or loss insurance, etc.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Insightful) by deimtee on Monday February 21 2022, @04:41PM (3 children)
You are correct of course about shipping generators and batteries around. What I never understood was why they didn't just pump it into tanks. There are already tanker trucks full of gas running around. You could even divert some into a gas powered compressor to just fill the tanks with, and then drive the tanks to somewhere that uses gas.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 21 2022, @04:59PM (2 children)
The economics work out about the same for transporting gas... still gotta have drivers, roads, and buyers. Maybe if the locals used natural gas for heating you might make a go of it, but if it's not a reliable supply you're not going to be popular when they have to switch to other more expensive sources. Also, storage during the non-heating months would get quite large / expensive to build and maintain.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday February 22 2022, @04:46AM (1 child)
Economics is always about the margins and invested capital. A tanker trailer and a small compressor are going to be much cheaper and lighter than an equivalent energy storage in lithium batteries. A tanker of gas is already shown to be a viable product, otherwise there wouldn't be tankers of gas driving around on the roads.
My suspicion is that despite the dramatic flames you get from flaring off, the rate of gas production is low enough that it would take too long to fill a tanker to be worthwhile.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday February 22 2022, @12:48PM
Well, obviously if you could fill a tanker truck every 15 minutes that might warrant building a pipeline. The equipment involved in compressing natural gas for transport isn't small or cheap. More than the trucks I think it's the compression equipment that has too long of an ROI. Generators to charge lithium batteries are a lot cheaper, but then the transport vehicle initial cost + maintenance is much higher.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday February 22 2022, @05:38PM
That merely increases those transportation costs. Batteries have lower energy density than LNG even if one assumes lossless charging of the batteries.
Not buying that. If there was any gain to not flaring that gas, they would already be doing it. Meanwhile crypto miners are willing to pay for cheap electricity from anywhere.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by captain normal on Monday February 21 2022, @05:24PM (2 children)
I'm scratching my head over how bitcoin mining could work without a high speed internet connection? Or is all just subsidizing Space-X?
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday February 22 2022, @02:21PM (1 child)
It is a satellite internet link. The bandwidth costs aren't all that high, you just need to get the blocks to hash and publish a "winning" hash ASAP after finding it. With the block interval at 10 minutes, the differential disadvantage of 100ms of sat-link delay shouldn't hurt too much. I'm pretty sure they'll have a "well connected" node do the negotiation with the rest of the miners, just push the heavy lift work out through the sat-link.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday February 22 2022, @02:24PM
Oh, also forgot, you don't send the whole block through the sat-link, just its Merkle Tree root or whatever they call the hash that gets signed - it's very small.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 21 2022, @04:14PM
This is exactly what they are doing... mining rigs don't direct convert methane. Thing is: mining rigs are about the only thing that produces enough income to justify the effort of generating electricity in that location. Now, what the excuses are for the flarestacks all over Houston? I think that's more a matter of people swimming in deep rivers of money with currents running so fast that they can't be bothered by the little details like 1MW of methane flares in the middle of town. It's like they say about the smell of chicken factory farms: "Son, that's the smell of money." Seeing those flares burn in Houston is just a sign that they're making so much money in other things that the distraction of energy capture from natural gas flares would potentially cause them more losses in the big picture than they could possibly gain.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Monday February 21 2022, @06:15PM
Like say a bitcoin miner? They've gone through this exercise before. This is the first time they found a buyer.