Venezuela could use wasted gas to mine Bitcoin

Venezuela has an open wound of resources that evaporate. Every year, about 13 billion cubic meters of gas are dissipated into the air, representing a loss of potential revenue close to $1.4 billion.

In this scenario of deteriorated infrastructure and lack of investment, Pierre Rochard, a bitcoin (BTC) analyst, puts on the table the solution of stopping burning gas to start mining the currency created by Satoshi Nakamoto.

The problem is not just the economic loss. Methane, the main component of natural gas, It is a greenhouse gas 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over a 20-year horizon. The methane «plumes» detected over the Orinoco belt and Lake Maracaibo (in the east and west of the country) are the visible symptom of a system that operates at the limit, according to a Bloomberg report.

“Recurring emissions are a critical warning sign,” explains Clayton Nash, director of strategic development at Tegre Corp. For Nash, these leaks are not isolated incidents, but rather the testimony of facilities that have stopped functioning properly after years of disinvestment.

Restoring the country’s operational capacity would require, according to calculations by Francisco Monaldi of the Baker Institute, an injection of 100 billion dollars over the next decade. However, in the absence of that capital, Bitcoin offers an immediate monetization alternative.

Mining Bitcoin with gas was already an idea in eastern Venezuela

Rochard’s proposal is not a distant theory. In fact, it emerged as a project that would take shape in 2022 in the Monagas state, the gas heart that generates 80% of national consumption, as reported by NoticiasVE at the time.

The experiment was never put into practice, especially after the PDVSA-Cripto corruption scheme was revealed that involved the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela SA and intervened in the Superintendency of Crypto Assets (Sunacrip), the main regulator of the sector in the country. It should be remembered that in Venezuela Bitcoin mining has been prohibited by the authorities since May 2024 to protect the electrical grid.

The truth is that, as proposed in 2022, Bitcoin mining farms can be installed inside containers located directly in the oil fields. The simple logic would be to use the surplus gas that cannot be transported due to lack of pipelines to power electrical generators. These generators They would put Bitcoin mining equipment into operationtransforming a polluting waste into a financial asset without saturating the already fragile national electrical grid.

Four years ago that formula was the one that the local government would implement to generate own income without depending on large foreign investments or the total repair of the national network.

The idea is not unique to Venezuela. This is because in the United States, companies in Texas and North Dakota already use gas to power nomadic data centers, managing to drastically reduce their carbon footprint by avoiding the direct venting of methane. Even in Norway, strict environmental regulations have pushed the industry to look for creative ways to capture every molecule of energy.

For Venezuela, however, the incentive is economic survival. Bitcoin mining offers a financial “off ramp” for a resource that would otherwise continue to heat the planet without leaving a single cent in the country’s coffers.

As Rochard suggests, converting methane into processing power could stop an environmental disaster, injecting the necessary cash flow so that the Venezuelan infrastructure, now rusty, can aspire to true reconstruction.