Just beyond a fenced-off access road in fields of tall grass on public land in Pennsylvania’s northwest sits a natural gas well pad that sat idle for close to a decade. The old fracking site suddenly roared back to life in 2022, spewing noise and pollution and rattling residents who were used to hunting pheasant on the quiet, bucolic terrain.
Diversified Energy turned on the well pad, known as Longhorn Pad A, to funnel the natural gas into on-site generators powering cryptocurrency-mining supercomputers that churn away at numbers at all hours. The company set up and started the mine without securing a required air quality permit from state regulators, Capital & Main reported last year.
