Page 136 - RusRPTSept22

the Association said.
Top five positions in the rating of goods purchased online comprise electronics and household appliances (22% of the total online commerce volume), followed by furniture and home goods (17.7%), apparel and footwear (13.9%), foods (13.5%) and beauty and wellness products (7.5%).
Russian oilfield operators are using electricity generated at the fields for crypto mining, with the total capacity of the emerging mining sub-segment reaching 85MW or about 23% of the total crypto mining, Kommersant daily reported citing estimates by Vygon Consulting.
As followed by bne IntelliNews, with the West imposing severe sanctions on Russia for its military invasion of Ukraine, some speculated that the country could turn to crypto-currencies. At the same time, Russian officials have sent mixed messages on the regulation of crypto-currency.
Reportedly, many Russian crypto mining farms are now powered by small power plants that use associated petroleum gas (APG) produced during oil minings. The oil companies themselves are not mining the crypto-currencies, but are selling the power to third-party data centres.
Oil companies annually use 17bn cubic metres (bcm) of APG to power their fields, out of which crypto-currency mining accounts for 279mn cubic metres, Vygon Consulting estimated. In July 2022 alone, the APG miners generated RUB400mn in revenues at an average July exchange rate of $20,000 per bitcoin.
Vygon estimated that a crypto farm on new computing machines and with free APG would only break even at a bitcoin rate of $21,600. In the most optimistic scenario, a third of all APG could be used for crypto mining, with the market soaring 25-fold to RUB30bn.
However, this does not account for the effect of the sanctions on Russian crypto activity and the difficulties with the supplies fo Western equipment.
9.1.10 Utilities & Renewables sector news
Electricity prices on European exchanges will increase by 25%. From September 20, the marginal price of electricity on European exchanges will increase by 25%, from €4,000 to €5,000 for 1 MWh. The joint committee made this exchange management decision. However, Lithuania's State Energy Regulatory Council reported that industry regulators from the Baltic countries opposed it. It is noted that this decision may negatively affect both the market cost of electricity and consumer prices in the future. The council will raise the issue of reviewing and clarifying the methodology to avoid the possibility of
136 RUSSIA Country Report September 2022 www.intellinews.com