Oman to harness waste flare gas to power data centres

BUSINESS REPORTER

MUSCAT, JUNE 4

A key agreement signed by Oman Investment Authority (OIA) with US-based Crusoe Energy Systems Inc will enable the Sultanate of Oman to utilise flare gas for high-performance cloud computing and other digital technology based innovations, thereby mitigating the planet-warming impacts of gas flaring as well.

Denver-based Crusoe announced that, following an investment from Oman Investment Authority (OIA) and Mubadala Investment Company (Mubadala), it is now expanding its Digital Flare Mitigation technology to the Middle East to help reduce flaring in the region. This investment will power Crusoe’s efforts to expand internationally as it works to align the future of computing with the future of the climate.

The financing was part of Crusoe’s $350m Series C round of funding that was led by climate technology investors G2 Venture Partners. This funding propels the expansion of Digital Flare Mitigation internationally and accelerates the launch of CrusoeCloud, the company’s High-Performance Computing (HPC) cloud offering powered by carbon-reducing energy sources. To complement its investment, OIA also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Crusoe to further advance sustainability opportunities for Oman by cooperating on new Digital Flare Mitigation technologies.

Collectively, the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region accounted for over 38 per cent of the global flaring in 2020, the Sultanate of Oman accounted for approximately 1.8 per cent or 2,517 million m3, while the UAE accounted for approximately 0.7 per cent or 955 million cubic metres (m3) of gas. With its track record of large-scale Digital Flare Mitigation deployments in the US, Crusoe's technology can mitigate waste from flaring in the MENA region to reduce the environmental impact from traditional energy providers.

Crusoe’s 98 Digital Flare Mitigation data centre have prevented an estimated 2.5 billion cubic feet of flaring and achieve up to 99.89 per cent elimination of methane emissions, whereas flares typically emit a significant amount of uncombusted methane. Their deployed fleet of flare-eliminating data centers have a capacity to reduce CO2-equivalent emissions estimated at 650,000 metric tonnes per year, comparable to removing approximately 140,000 cars from the road.