On U.S. oil patches stretching along the Rockies and Great Plains, trailers hitched to trucks back up toward well pads to capture natural gas and convert it on the spot into electricity.
The trailers – carrying pipes, generators and computers – are called “mining rigs.” But their owners aren’t there to drill for oil. They are using stray natural gas unwanted by oil companies to power their search for another treasure: cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
Cryptocurrencies are virtual coins exchanged without middlemen, such as central banks, to purchase goods and services. Extracting the currency from cyberspace, however, requires vast amounts of often-expensive electricity. Supercomputers must run constantly in a race against other “miners” to solve complex math problems in order to unlock digital vaults holding the currency.
Placed in mobile trailers, these supercomputers run as hot as 160 degrees Fahrenheit (71 degrees Celsius), and in the cold of western North Dakota, people stay warm just by sitting near them, cryptocurrency miners say.
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.
Oil companies face pressure from investors and government officials to reduce emissions that lead to global warming. Sometimes they give the gas away for free to cryptocurrency miners; other times they sell it.
“Oil and gas companies don’t like to flare their gas – that’s money that’s burning away,” said Degenfelder, which works with miners connected to EZ Blockchain, a Chicago-based energy and technology company, to cut flaring at some of its 600 oil wells across the Rocky Mountains.
HIGHLY UNCERTAIN
Some environmental advocates and investors say cryptocurrencies are not a long-term solution to unwanted natural gas emissions, both because the currency’s future is highly uncertain and because Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency companies produce their own emissions.
The global Bitcoin industry’s overall C02 emissions have risen to 60 million tons, equal to the exhaust from about 9 million cars. That’s up from 20 million tons from two years ago, according to a March report by Bank of America analysts.
Values of Bitcoin, the best known cryptocurrency, plunged from record highs after billionaire Elon Musk tweeted that his electric car company Tesla Inc would no longer take the virtual coins as payment, citing concerns over “rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions.” The currency plunged in value https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/bitcoin-is-now-worst-all-financial-worlds-2021-05-19 over two weeks before starting to recover Thursday.
Andrew Logan, senior director of oil and gas at Ceres, the Boston-based clean-energy investor group, said there are better ways to use stranded gas, including to power hospitals and schools. However, that would require building pipelines to carry the product out of the oil patch, he said.
“I think we need much more durable and long-term solutions that really bring that gas to market and let it be used for whatever its highest purpose is,” he said.
Proponents say the new oil-cryptocurrency alliances in North America move mining for virtual coins away from Asia, home to more than 60% of such operations, which largely rely on coal-powered electricity. Coal combustion produces roughly twice as much C02 as natural gas.
“It helps cut emissions at (an oil) producer level, but also globally by reducing mining in parts of the world where coal is likely the power source,” said Mark Le Dain, vice president of strategy at oil and gas software company Validere Technologies Inc, which tracks energy molecules and their use.
Environmental advocates and some investors note, however, that the harmful emissions don’t disappear – they are transferred from one industry to another.
“It’s not like you’re eliminating the emissions, it’s that you’re turning them into this other thing, Bitcoin,” Logan said.
CATCHING IMAGINATIONS
The allure of Bitcoin remains for miners despite the challenges of cryptocurrency markets. Even after the recent price crash, a single Bitcoin was worth more than $40,000 on Thursday – almost 90 times its value five years ago, according to Refinitiv Eikon data.
Some cryptocurrency mining companies say the mobility of their natural gas-fueled operations is key, giving them flexibility to draw natural gas from different sites as it becomes available.
“The idea that you could plug in these (computers) and then take them somewhere else just really caught my imagination,” said Haley Thomson, a former electricity trader and president of new cryptocurrency mining company Imperium Digital.
A variety of business models have been born. In some cases, cryptocurrency miners pay the oil firms for their natural gas wholly or in part using the coins they mine. In the case of Kirkwood, EZ Blockchain uses stranded natural gas to make Bitcoin, giving it all to Kirkwood. EZ Blockchain makes money by supplying equipment and mining services for a fee.
Industry experts and academics who study energy uses say there are fewer than 10 large-scale Bitcoin mining companies in North America that run on stranded natural gas. Many cryptocurrency miners run smaller operations in the United States and Canada – some fueled by a single well.
But some major oil companies have signed on.
In North Dakota, a top oil-producing state, Norway’s Equinor ASA and Canada‘s Enerplus Corp are among those that have used such mining to reduce flaring, company spokespeople confirmed to Reuters.
Denver-based Crusoe Energy Systems Inc is one of the continent’s largest Bitcoin mining companies using otherwise stranded gas. It expects to double its current staff of 55 this year, said Cully Cavness, co-founder and a former oil and gas engineer.
Crusoe has about 40 mobile containers in oil shale basins. It plans on increasing that number to 100 after receiving $128 million in financing last month from investors including Chicago-based firm Valor Equity Partners LP and Lowercarbon Capital.
Crusoe’s partners have included Kraken Oil & Gas Partners LLC, which produces about 10,000 bpd of oil, making the company the largest oil producer in Montana.
“We’re going to need a lot more people,” Cavness said.
Meanwhile, government regulations and incentives are in the offing that could benefit oil and cryptocurrency companies.
The U.S. Senate passed a measure in April to reverse former President Donald Trump’s weakening of methane emission regulations. That could fuel the use of Bitcoin mining to cut flaring, academic experts said. Lawmakers in Texas and New Mexico also are looking to crack down on emissions.
North Dakota and Wyoming this year passed laws that give tax breaks to oil producers that provide gas to cryptocurrency and other data miners that would otherwise have been flared.
“I think it’s gonna be a big chunk at what we look at for the future in North Dakota,” said state Senator Dale Patten, who authored North Dakota’s bill.
(Laila Kearney reported from New York. Editing by David Gaffen and Julie Marquis)
MONCTON, N.B. – New Brunswick RCMP say two youths have been arrested after an emergency alert was issued Monday evening about someone carrying a gun in the province’s southeast.
Caledonia Region Mounties say they were first called out to Main Street in the community of Salisbury around 7 p.m. on reports of a shooting.
A 48-year-old man was found at the scene suffering from gunshot wounds and he was rushed to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Police say in the interest of public safety, they issued an Alert Ready message at 8:15 p.m. for someone driving a silver Ford F-150 pickup truck and reportedly carrying a firearm with dangerous intent in the Salisbury and Moncton area.
Two youths were arrested without incident later in the evening in Salisbury, and the alert was cancelled just after midnight Tuesday.
Police are still looking for the silver pickup truck, covered in mud, with possible Nova Scotia licence plate HDC 958. They now confirm the truck was stolen from Central Blissville.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MISSISSAUGA, Ont. – Golf Canada has set an impressive stretch goal of having 30 professional golfers at the highest levels of the sport by 2032.
The World Junior Girls Golf Championship is a huge part of that target.
Credit Valley Golf and Country Club will host the international tournament from Sept. 30 to Oct. 5, with 24 teams representing 23 nations — Canada gets two squads — competing. Lindsay McGrath, a 17-year-old golfer from Oakville, Ont., said she’s excited to be representing Canada and continue to develop her game.
“I’m really grateful to be here,” said McGrath on Monday after a news conference in Credit Valley’s clubhouse in Mississauga, Ont. “It’s just such an awesome feeling being here and representing our country, wearing all the logos and being on Team Canada.
“I’ve always wanted to play in this tournament, so it’s really special to me.”
McGrath will be joined by Nobelle Park of Oakville, Ont., and Eileen Park of Red Deer, Alta., on Team Canada 2. All three earned their places through a qualifying tournament last month.
“I love my teammates so much,” said McGrath. “I know Nobelle and Eileen very well. I’m just so excited to be with them. We have such a great relationship.”
Shauna Liu of Maple, Ont., Calgary’s Aphrodite Deng and Clairey Lin make up Team Canada 2. Liu earned her exemption following her win at the 2024 Canadian Junior Girls Championship while Deng earned her exemption as being the low eligible Canadian on the world amateur golf ranking as of Aug. 7.
Deng was No. 175 at the time, she has since improved to No. 171 and is Canada’s lowest-ranked player.
“I think it’s a really great opportunity,” said Liu. “We don’t really get that many opportunities to play with people from across the world, so it’s really great to meet new people and play with them.
“It’s great to see maybe how they play and take parts from their game that we might also implement our own games.”
Golf Canada founded the World Junior Girls Golf Championship in 2014 to fill a void in women’s international competition and help grow its own homegrown talent. The hosts won for the first time last year when Vancouver’s Anna Huang, Toronto’s Vanessa Borovilos and Vancouver’s Vanessa Zhang won team gold and Huang earned individual silver.
Medallists who have gone on to win on the LPGA Tour include Brooke Henderson of Smiths Falls, Ont., who was fourth in the individual competition at the inaugural tournament. She was on Canada’s bronze-medal team in 2014 with Selena Costabile of Thornhill, Ont., and Calgary’s Jaclyn Lee.
Other notable competitors who went on to become LPGA Tour winners include Angel Yin and Megan Khang of the United States, as well as Yuka Saso of the Philippines, Sweden’s Linn Grant and Atthaya Thitikul of Thailand.
“It’s not if, it’s when they’re going to be on the LPGA Tour,” said Garrett Ball, Golf Canada’s chief operating officer, of how Canada’s golfers in the World Junior Girls Championship can be part of the organization’s goal to have 30 pros in the LPGA and PGA Tours by 2032.
“Events like this, like the She Plays Golf festival that we launched two years ago, and then the CPKC Women’s Open exemptions that we utilize to bring in our national team athletes and get the experience has been important in that pathway.”
The individual winner of the World Junior Girls Golf Championship will earn a berth in next year’s CPKC Women’s Open at nearby Mississaugua Golf and Country Club.
Both clubs, as well as former RBC Canadian Open host site Glen Abbey Golf Club, were devastated by heavy rains through June and July as the Greater Toronto Area had its wettest summer in recorded history.
Jason Hanna, the chief operating officer of Credit Valley Golf and Country Club, said that he has seen the Credit River flood so badly that it affected the course’s playability a handful of times over his nearly two decades with the club.
Staff and members alike came together to clean up the course after the flooding was over, with hundreds of people coming together to make the club playable again.
“You had to show up, bring your own rake, bring your own shovel, bring your own gloves, and then we’d take them down to the golf course, assign them to areas where they would work, and then we would do a big barbecue down at the halfway house,” said Hanna. “We got guys, like, 80 years old, putting in eight-hour days down there, working away.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
NEW YORK (AP) — Fenway Park has the Ted Williams seat. And now Citi Field has the Grimace seat.
The kid-friendly McDonald’s character made another appearance at the ballpark Monday, when the New York Mets unveiled a commemorative purple seat in section 302 to honor “his special connection to Mets fans.”
Wearing his pear-shaped purple costume and a baseball glove on backwards, Grimace threw out a funny-looking first pitch — as best he could with those furry fingers and short arms — before New York beat the Miami Marlins at Citi Field on June 12.
That victory began a seven-game winning streak, and Grimace the Mets’ good-luck charm soon went viral, taking on a life of its own online.
New York is 53-31 since June 12, the best record in the majors during that span. The Mets were tied with rival Atlanta for the last National League playoff spot as they opened their final homestand of the season Monday night against Washington.
The new Grimace seat in the second deck in right field — located in row 6, seat 12 to signify 6/12 on the calendar — was brought into the Shannon Forde press conference room Monday afternoon. The character posed next to the chair and with fans who strolled into the room.
The seat is available for purchase for each of the Mets’ remaining home games.
“It’s been great to see how our fanbase created the Grimace phenomenon following his first pitch in June and in the months since,” Mets senior vice president of partnerships Brenden Mallette said in a news release. “As we explored how to further capture the magic of this moment and celebrate our new celebrity fan, installing a commemorative seat ahead of fan appreciation weekend felt like the perfect way to give something back to the fans in a fun and unique way.”
Up in Boston, the famous Ted Williams seat is painted bright red among rows of green chairs deep in the right-field stands at Fenway Park to mark where a reported 502-foot homer hit by the Hall of Fame slugger landed in June 1946.
So, does this catapult Grimace into Splendid Splinter territory?
“I don’t know if we put him on the same level,” Mets executive vice president and chief marketing officer Andy Goldberg said with a grin.
“It’s just been a fun year, and at the same time, we’ve been playing great ball. Ever since the end of May, we have been crushing it,” he explained. “So I think that added to the mystique.”
