Kazakhstan Seeks to Cut Flaring and Bring Bitcoin and Crypto Mining Operations Back with Wellhead Power

Kazakhstan is pursuing a new energy strategy that pairs unused gas from oil production with cryptocurrency mining, hoping to revive an industry that previously strained the national grid.

Authorities want miners to generate their own electricity on site from associated petroleum gas that is now routinely burned off at wellheads.

The approach is designed to cut wasteful flaring, ease pressure on the power system, and give oil producers a commercial use for a byproduct that has long been treated as a liability.

Associated gas comes up with crude oil.

In remote fields it is often uneconomic to capture and pipe to market, so operators flare it.

That practice wastes energy, produces emissions, and can constrain oil output because of environmental rules and fines.

A July 2026 presidential decree created a path for producers to convert that gas into off-grid power for digital mining when the resource is not required for state needs.

Ministries of energy and of artificial intelligence and digital development are now drafting the detailed legal rules.Industry figures illustrate the scale.

In 2024 Kazakhstan flared an estimated 300 to 340 million cubic meters of associated petroleum gas.

Converted to electricity, that volume could have produced roughly 1.2 to 1.3 terawatt-hours.