Flaring gas in oil and gas industry is a common practice. When an oil well begins to be produced from the productive layers, less-valuable natural gas comes up alongside crude. Pipelines’re not always available to transport gas to the reservoirs, and producers often get rid of the gas so they don’t have to stop pumping oil, because time is money during oil and gas operations. The 1 day stop of oil and gas producing facility may cost millions of dollars to the companies. They burn the gas, flaring, or release it into air, venting. Flaring is most common practice, because electricity power can be gained. Flaring releases greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, there is no other commercially effective choice. The acryptocurrency mining may change things.
Flaring gas in the sea
Russia places first among gas-flaring. Russia’s oil major operating company Gazprom Neft started using "to be flared" gas for mining cryptocurrency at Siberian drilling sites. Russian mining operation Vekus helped Gazprom Neft to convert unwanted gas to cryptocurrency. Vekus's container houses 150 Bitmain’s Antminer S9 ASICs on the site, and the machines mined 1.8 bitcoin using 49,500 cubic meters of gas in 1 month.
Gazprom isn't the one and only one player here, Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation opened a mining farm northwest of Moscow, chinese mining giant Bitmain builds a facility in Rockdale, Texas.
Using excess gas and renewable energy to mine cryptocurrency means that Bitcoin mining becomes industrial. This may lead to Bitcoin's price being dependant on these resources, which is not good. Then Bitcoin prices may fall significantly.
original source
https://www.publish0x.com/tofnaz-crypto-blog/oil-companies-start-mining-bitcoins-xereqxk