ConocoPhillips is supplying a Bitcoin mining project with natural gas from the Bakken shale of North Dakota in a first for a major U.S. producer.
The gas supplied to the pilot project, owned and managed by a third party, would otherwise be burned into the atmosphere in a process known as flaring, Houston-based ConocoPhillips said in an emailed response to questions, without identifying the cryptocurrency miner.
Flaring is a common practice in the shale industry to discard gas that’s obtained as a byproduct of oil production, especially in areas where there’s no pipeline infrastructure to capture the gas.
The concept of using bitcoin mining as a solution to gas flaring is not a new one. Regulators such as the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources have been looking into several projects that tackle the issue of gas flaring in the state.