Transforming stranded energy into #Bitcoin ⛏️ and opportunity. African-built, driving sustainable growth, jobs, and innovation. 🌍⚡ Empowering prosperity.
Africa
Joined November 2021
- Tweets1.2K
- Following335
- Followers460
- Likes2K
Pinned Tweet
We built our first site in one of the most unstable places in Nigeria. Not because it was easy, but because if stranded energy can become compute there, it can work anywhere. The lessons from that site are how we operate everywhere.
Gas-to-wire needs a grid and an offtaker. Gas-to-liquids needs a pipeline or a product market.
The flares-to-FLOPS preprint puts it plainly: on-site compute needs none of these, because the product leaves over a data link.
That is why we started with Bitcoin.
Source: Mbazor et al., "From flares to FLOPS", SSRN preprint posted 17 Oct 2026, not yet peer reviewed. Section 1, Introduction. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.…
Midstream is coming. Has been for years.
If you own the gas, what would it take for you to monetize it on site this year instead of waiting another one?
The reactor point, stated honestly: at catalogue cost, building the reactor at once beats waiting. The bridge helps where that cannot be financed.
Bitcoin first, AI later, firm power after. Monetized waste helps pay for what comes next.
It is a preprint, not yet peer reviewed, and its calibration site was not on flare gas. The authors list repeating it at a flare-gas site as a next step.
We built our first site on gas that used to be flared. Good to see the research heading the same way.
Source: Mbazor et al., "From flares to FLOPS", SSRN preprint posted 17 Oct 2026, not yet peer reviewed. Pathway Section 2.1; flaring charge Sections 2.1, 3.2, 4.3; field record Sections 3.1, 3.7; reactor timing Sections 3.5, 4.1; limits Section 4.4. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.…
A new preprint models a path that starts where we did in Bayelsa in Feb 2025, then keeps going: flare gas to Bitcoin, then solar and compute, then a small modular reactor.
What it finds, and what we take from it.
The policy point: phase one stays profitable at any bitcoin price only if at least $1.35/mscf of Nigeria's $3.50/mscf unauthorised flaring charge is passed to the project.
Enforcement and contract design matter more than markets here, by the authors' own reading.
The pathway:
Phase 1 (years 0 to 3): gas engines power Bitcoin miners plus a community allocation.
Phase 2 (years 3 to 5): solar and wind added, early compute load opens.
Phase 3 (years 5 to 10): a small reactor powers a firm AI data centre.
Nigeria's charge for unauthorised flaring is $3.50/mscf. A new preprint finds phase one of a flare-to-compute project is profitable at any bitcoin price only if at least $1.35/mscf of it reaches the project.
Operators, NGFCP award holders: do your gas deals pass any of it on?
Source: Mbazor et al., "From flares to FLOPS", SSRN preprint posted 17 Oct 2026, not yet peer reviewed. Charge: Section 2.1. The $1.35 threshold: Sections 3.2 and 4.3 (base-case costs). papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.…
The world flared 167 billion cubic meters of gas in 2025, close to Africa's total annual gas use (World Bank, 2026).
Our approach is unglamorous: go to the waste, turn it into revenue on site, and let that revenue help secure the infrastructure that's already there.
Then build more. That's the model we built in Bayelsa.
Quick question for operators running associated gas with no pipe:
What is the actual reason the flare is still lit? Gas quality, volume, access, or nobody ever offered to take it?
Genuinely want to know.
Rich countries didn't get rich and then build power. They built power and then got rich.
Nigeria still burns off gas at oil sites every day.
Operators: what would it take for you to run something with it instead?
Texas just showed that islanded is not the same as unregulated.
The Sept 21 directive pauses TCEQ permits for data center projects, and law firms read it to reach behind-the-meter gas generation too.
If you built your plan on skipping the grid, what is plan B?
Sources: Gov. Abbott letter to TCEQ, Sept 21, 2026 gov.texas.gov/uploads/files/…
Troutman Pepper Locke troutman.com/insights/govern…