Russia’s Gazpromneft Launches Crypto Mining Operations With BitRiver

Russia’s Gazpromneft launches crypto mining operations with the help of BitRiver and will use the CO2 of the country to generate power for the mega-mining farm so let’s read more today in our latest cryptocurrency news.

The US sanctions against Russia played a huge role in the adoption of crypto in the EU region causing the oil companies like Russia’s Gazpromneft to look for other ways and exploit natural resources like crypto mining. The company is a subsidiary of Russian oil and natural gas giant Gazprom which announced a 2-year collaboration agreement with BitRiver, the Swiss-based mining company to supply them with energy resources and sustain their crypto mining operations.

As per the information shared by the Economic Forum, the two companies will work together to use the surplus of electricity from the CO2 released during Gazprom’s oil extraction operations in the country and this is becoming a problem for many companies because they have to burn it in the atmosphere. However, what Gazpromneft will do is a better solution. Igor Runets is the founder and CEO of Bitriver and said that the company aims to build a mining infrastrcuture in Russia with the help and support of Gazpromneft. The infrastructure will reach 2 Gigawatts of electrical power which is bigger than the facilities built in Texas by Riot Blockchain:

“Over the next two years, BitRiver intends to implement projects to create its own data centers for power-intensive computing with power scaling up to 2 [gigawatts], including [petroleum gas], which will additionally provide high and stable power consumption.”

This will be one of the biggest projects BitRiver did and it will be the first crypto-mining company to be sanctioned by the US under the pack of sanctions against Russia. However, the company also issued a statement arguing that the US accusations are false. For a few years now, Bitcoin and crypto mining became a topic of interest for conservationists in regard to high energy consumption. The efforts however could end up helping oil companies that reduce CO2 emissions.

This is not the first time that Gazpromneft entered the crypto mining market. In 2020 the company opened a new crypto mining venue in Siberia but at that time, they didn’t intend to operate the mining farms but only to supply electricity to the miners. Also, the US oil giant Exxon Mobil was working for a year on a project to take advantage of BTC mining and get rid of CO2.