Bengal Energy, a Canadian oil and gas business, is dabbling in Bitcoin (BTC) mining as a way to tap into the untapped energy from its gas wells in the Australian outback.
Bengal Energy plans to conduct a pilot program where nearly 70 Bitcoin mining rigs will be set up within a mobile building — known in the local mining industry as a “donga” — that will be assembled near a series of previously out-of-service gas wells in the Cooper Basin, according to a report from The Australian.
Bengal Energy bought the gas wells from its regional oil and gas extraction counterparts, Santos Energy and Bridgeport Energy, as per Bengal Energy’s chief operating officer Kai Eberspaecher. He further added,
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“We were basically looking at six months of having wells ready but without an outlet. We were dealing with stranded assets.”
The freshly acquired gas wells, according to Eberspacher, provided an unusual dilemma for the energy firm because they were “stranded wells.” While the corporation may technically generate electricity from the gas on-site, the existing distribution pipelines are just too far away to reach.
The development of a pipeline to serve Bengal’s remote gas wells is currently underway. COVID-19-related supply chain concerns, on the other hand, have compounded the development delays.
The answer was discovered to be portable Bitcoin mining machines in Dongas. A trial donga will be equipped with 66 mining machines capable of generating around 0.005 BTC per day, or about $235.
However, Bengal Energy is apparently hoping to double its Bitcoin mining output by a ratio of 10 to 20 if the trial is successful, suggesting total income may range from $2000 to $5000 per day.
Portable Bitcoin mining operations
Bengal Energy joins a growing number of mining corporations, including ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil, that are looking to use portable Bitcoin mining operations to unlock the full potential of normally lost or stranded energy.
As a result of the highly publicized environmental criticisms of BTC mining, fossil fuel firms have become increasingly concerned with discovering innovative ways to prevent the hazardous effects of mining processes and, when possible, use any sustainable alternatives.
In the fourth quarter of 2021, the Bitcoin Mining Council predicted that the global industry would have a sustainable energy mix of 58.5 percent. Miners in Norway are even drying lumber with waste heat. At the time of writing, Bitcoin (BTC) was priced at $47,287.56 with a hike of 0.04% in the last 24 hours.