Russian Oil Firm Gazpromneft To Launch Digital Asset Mining Operation With BitRiver

Gazpromneft, a subsidiary of Russian oil and natural gas giant Gazprom, declared a two-year partnership agreement with BitRiver, a Swiss BTC mining organization, to supply them with energy resources to sustain their digital asset mining operations.

As per the information shared by the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, the two organizations will work together to channel surplus electricity from the carbon dioxide generated during Gazprom’s oil extraction operations in the country.

Igor Runets, the founder and CEO of BitRiver, mentioned that the firm aims to eventually build a mining infrastructure in Russia with support from Gazpromneft. The infrastructure would reach up to two gigawatts of electrical power, which is much larger than the facilities built in Texas by the United States mining company Riot Blockchain.

The announcement mentioned,

“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.”

Notably, this is not the 1st time Gazpromneft has entered the virtual currency mining market. In late 2020, the firm opened a venue for digital asset mining on one of its oil drilling sites in Siberia, Russia. Nevertheless, at that time, they did not aim to operate the crypto mining farms but to provide electricity to the miners.