Oil giant, Exxon Mobil Corp. plans to run pilot program in Nigeria using excess natural gas that would otherwise be flared off from it’s Qua Ibom oil terminal to power cryptocurrency-mining operations and reduce gas emissions.
Qua Iboe Terminal is one of Nigeria’s largest export facilities and plants in which Exxon Mobil owns 40% interest in the field production mix. The terminal is located on the eastern side of the Qua Iboe river estuary and contains nine crude oil storage tanks with a total capacity of 4.5 million bbls (Billion barrels of petroleum liquids). The production currently averages approximately 320kbd (Thousands of Barrels Per Day)
According to Bloomberg report, the oil giant has an agreement with Crusoe Energy Systems Inc. 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.
“We continuously evaluate emerging technologies aimed at reducing flaring volumes across our operations,” and Exxon expects to meet the World Bank’s call to end routine flaring by 2030, spokeswoman Sarah Nordin said in an email. She declined to comment on “rumors and speculations regarding the pilot project.”
Oil and gas producers are increasingly under pressure from regulators and investors to reduce their carbon footprint to help combat climate change. That includes reducing the amount of gas they flare. At the same time, there is a rush of miners trying to use cheap gas in oil producing fields to fuel their operations. The gas is still burned, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but the energy is put to use instead of simply being wasted.
Last month, ConocoPhillips said that has been supplying gas from the Bakken shale in North Dakota to a Bitcoin mining firm for the first time.
Shale oil produces so much excess gas that it ends up being vented into the air or burned off. Natural gas is comprised mostly of methane, a global warming agent that is more than 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide during its first two decades in the atmosphere. North Dakota, Colorado and Wyoming are among the first places to use crypto mining to slash methane emissions
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