A huge Yorkshire gas field is set to be used for Bitcoin mining instead of helping boost Britain’s energy supply. The Telegraph has more.
Reabold Resources has been awarded a licence to carry out “gentle” fracking in the West Newton field near Hull, which is estimated to contain up to eight billion cubic metres of gas.
That would be enough to meet more than a tenth of the UK’s annual needs and makes it one of the largest onshore fields discovered in Britain, with the potential to bolster energy security for years to come.
However, Reabold instead plans to construct a small gas-fired power station on the site and use the energy produced to “mine” Bitcoin.
“A private gas supply means we can run a data centre to mine Bitcoin relatively cheaply,” said Sachin Oza, the co-Chief Executive of Reabold Resources, which has just been given a drilling licence by the Environment Agency.
“Initially, this would help fund the further development of the gas field and prove the concept – meaning it could become the precursor to a far larger data centre.”
The scheme has angered environmental groups opposed to new gas fields and fracking in particular.
It is also likely to raise questions in the Government after the war in Iran prompted fears of fuel shortages in the UK.
Bitcoin mining is one of the most energy-intensive of all digital activities. A power station would need to burn around 150,000 cubic metres of gas – the volume of 50 Olympic swimming pools – to generate the electricity needed to create one Bitcoin.
Reabold’s West Newton gas field is so large that it could theoretically power the creation of 50,000 Bitcoins.
Alternatively, it could help provide gas for the whole of the UK. The drilling site lies within a couple of miles of National Gas’s transmission pipeline and so could easily be connected. …
Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, imposed a ban on full-scale fracking last year. The process involves injecting high-pressure water laden with chemicals into rock to create cracks through which gas can flow. …
Despite this, the rules still allow lower-pressure fracking of the kind planned at West Newton. …
The search for Bitcoin is becoming one of the most profitable and energy-intensive global activities, last year estimated to consume 160 terawatt hours of electricity. That’s about 50% of the UK’s entire annual consumption.
Worth reading in full.
Low pressure. Blast from the past.
Oh yeah that’s a favorite. As I recall, that wasn’t parody from someone from the right and their view of what the left would really like to do. A short search finds that it was created by a left-wing group:
The 10:10 climate campaign a grassroots movement launched in 2009 with the primary goal of encouraging individuals, businesses, and institutions to cut their carbon emissions by 10% during the year 2010.
Source Google AI
Right now the only thing on the minds of the Parliamentary set is the Mandelson saga. It is understandable, it’s a tissue of lies that are still being concocted as we speak. Miliband has not been seen for quite some time indicating that he has been working overtime on pulling Starmer’s strings.
No word on Jackdaw and Rosebank. “It’s a matter for the Secretary of State…“. And it is the last thing he will ever sign off on, as we full well know.
If anyone should see mad Ed give him a wave. Being a climate prophet can be a lonely life.
He is being let out tomorrow with a Double Down on Net Zero because of Iran speech. There is no word on Jackdaw and Rosebank and there will be none for some months as he has kicked the can. He has sent the drilling licence applicants a huge list of questions that will take months to answer. So he has no need to approve until they answer and even then he will then prevaricate until the oil prices drop and he can say NO.
The carbon … the carbon …
What a waste .
Bitcoin is just a brand name .
“The scheme has angered environmental groups opposed to new gas fields and fracking in particular.”
But they don’t mind seeing the landscape covered with hideous wind and solar “farms”. The seem to me to have severely diseased brains.
The solution is to power this bitcoin mining scheme solely by windmills and solar panels.
Oh, wait… 😉
“gentle fracking”…I’m sure that triggers the anti-fraccers into a frenzy…
Headline: Giant Yorkshire Gas Field ‘To Mine Bitcoin Instead of Boosting British Energy’
Will gas be used to produce electrical energy – yes
Will it happen in Britain – yes
Are other people right now using energy to mine Bitcoin – yes
Are some of them doing it in Britain – yes
Are people mining Bitcoin in Britain using electricity produced by natural gas – yes
Odd headline.
Not at all, especially given the current circumstances. This bitcoin company is being handed a giant gift, at the expense of the British people. It’s frankly retarded.
I don’t follow the logic. The bitcoin miner is bad because they are mining bitcoin or because they are building their own power source?
If using gas to generate electricity is okay
and using electricity to mine bitcoin is okay
then the remaining argument is about who gets how much money.
The logic is quite simple :
Country needs cheap energy.
Finally production of cheap energy is allowed.
But this energy is used for something else.
(which may lead to some assumptions that bitcoin ain’t what it seems to be, but a Trojan horse.
Seems DARPA learned a lot with the Lifelog failure and went straight to the Facebook approach of a nerdy genius instead of even tryin the state controlled approach).
But to make it easier to understand.
Remember those countries with hungry people?
Finally they start planting palms etc,
but it turns out that those palms are only there to deliver palm oil
used as fuel in crazy western countries for their AGW agenda.
So the argument is:
Gas fields for bitcoin is bad because the palm trees are corrupt.
Either you are retarded, or simply being disingenuous. Hard to tell which.
I guess I’m retarded.
Is the argument
“It’s bad to mine bitcoin with electricity from burning gas because lots of other people want to burn the gas for electricity that does other things”?
The greentards would say it bad to “burn gas” doesn’t matter the use. It would really trigger them that it’s being burnt for capitalism
21 months to go
By 2028!?!?
There’s a subtitle that will follow him… though at over 80 years old he’s probably just hoping to fund his grandkids college travels with the revenue.
I think any definition of “The Fossil Fuel Civilizations” would have to include… all of them.
And you can’t do both why? ie. sell gas to the ‘grid’ and burn gas for your mining?
The only positive thing to come out of Bitcoin is blockchain.
“The search for Bitcoin is becoming one of the most profitable and energy-intensive global activities, last year estimated to consume 160 terawatt hours of electricity. That’s about 50% of the UK’s entire annual consumption.”
Follow the money.
“Bitcoin demographics are characterized by a young, predominantly male audience, with high adoption among Millennials and Gen Z (ages 18–45) and growing participation in urban areas. Users often have higher incomes and at least a university degree, though high-income and low-income brackets both show increased engagement.”
Not sure what I was looking for, maybe a nefarious angle like Russian internet credential kidnappers. It points to – if there’s some way to literally ‘make money’, then people will try to do whatever ‘that way’ is. Deep thought wanders to central banking… they don’t even need gas.
What’s really needed is a ban on mad Miliband.
What’s the crossover level between fracking and gentle fracking that gets this project over the line?
Or why hasn’t Milliband found some other cod environmental statute to block it?
In my opinion; cryptocurrency is the 21st Century equivalent to the 17th Century Dutch tulip mania. The ultimate fiat currency; backed by nothing, not even the full faith and credit of a government; it seems to me to only be worth anything because people agree that it’s worth something.
Conditioning,Hype and Trust are the magic words.
Wether It’s backed by nothing or not is irrelevant as long as most play along..
99.9% of all currencies have failed by now, despite full faith and credit of all their governments.
And Bitcoin has a significant hype advantage of being a rebel thing (if we ignore that part of the encryption is an NSA code whose previous versions all had backdoors)
and the pathetic nerd romantic stereotype of a lonely mysterious guy who created everything alone and disappeared (and people still believe this shit after all these years)
And Trump solidified it w his crypto Stablecoin legislation.
For this they need the control grid currently being weaponised by his financial backers ( Palentir etc), to inflate away the dollar fiat ‘paper’ money. Even worse than CBDC.
And also based on digital IDs.
Catherine Austin Fitz and others have talked about this. Your freedom WILL be taken away and Trump will facilitate..
What’s the point of allowing gas extraction, and fracking – both things Labour is supposed to be dead against, if not for the UK’s benefit? A bitcoin mining centre is of zero value to Britain. Was there a generous campaign contribution somewhere?
Makes perfect sense, just as power plants dedicated to bitcoin operate in the USA! Money talks, power needs walk.
It seems like the most profane abuse of a natural resource and the environment, to destroy it by playing a “Dragons and Dugeons” game called Bitcoin. How does Bitcoin differ from other mediums of exchange, and who determines how it is created, or mined, when such activity does not have any characteristics that benefit humanity in any measureable way? At least the participants in the Dutch Tulip Bulb Hysteria, in the end, had something to hold in their hands. When the illusion of Bitcion fails, I don’t think the participants will.