By
Chimamanda U. Martha
April 19th, 2024
YPF has installed 1MG pilot operation and plans to expand it to 8MG operation by the end of this year.
Earlier on Sunday, October 2, Argentina’s state-owned energy firm YPF announced that it’s providing power to an undisclosed crypto mining company.
Three months ago, YPF Luz – the renewable energy arm of YPF started a 1-megawatt pilot operation for electricity generation from residual gas. Developed in Vaca Muerta, YPF Luz supplies energy for the mining of crypto assets. Speaking to local news agency Telam, YPF Luz CEO Martín Mandarano said:
“We started to develop this generation pilot for cryptocurrency mining with a vision of sustainability and business from flare natural gas, which cannot be harnessed during exploration and at the beginning of the production of an oil field”.
As said the first pilot which is currently functional operates with 1MW of generation. Before the end of the year, another project with 8MG generation capacity will come into operation in the Bajo Del Taro area.
The development of the first pilot project started three months ago in the Loma Campana area. This is the very early stage of hydrocarbon development wherein oil has been associated with natural gas. YPF Luz thought of converting this waste into some added value. The gas going to the flare is burned and used for the generation of electrical energy via the installation of motor generators at the foot of the Deposit.
Here’s How Clients Use the Energy
Clients would do the crypto mining job and pay for the energy tied to the blockchain price. Sometimes, they would also pay a fixed price for their global data processing. The clients installing this energy are currently on the Vace Muerta land with computer equipment mounted in containers and high electrical demand.
The manager at the facility explained that their clients do the crypto mining and pay “us for the energy we sell to them”. “Once the well is completed and oil and gas are already in production, the generation and mining equipment shall be removed to another well at the start of the development, because it is modular equipment and easy to transport”.
“What we are doing is atypical because it is taking the demand to where the supply is, in this case in Vaca Muerta, when normally the supply is somewhere else, hundreds or thousands of kilometers away, for which it is necessary to build a transmission that is precisely one of the infrastructure problems,” added Mandarano.
