Oil drillers and Bitcoin miners bond over natural gas
The miners are increasingly sending these rigs out to oil fields because it’s one of the cheapest ways to obtain the energy they need. Oil and natural gas come from the same wells, but at these sites, drillers are seeking crude oil and have no pipelines to get the gas to market. That typically forces them to burn it off in a process called flaring - creating carbon dioxide emissions - or to vent it into the atmosphere directly as methane.
“The sweet spot for us is stranded, low volumes of gas that don’t justify a pipeline,” said Steve Degenfelder, land manager at Wyoming-based producer Kirkwood Oil and Gas LLC, which has formed an alliance with Bitcoin miners.
No. Don’t even try to explain any of this shit from a utilitarian perspective. Just know that the market demands people do this.
