Russia's Gazpromneft and U.S.-sanctioned bitcoin (BTC) mining hosting firm BitRiver plan to develop crypto mining facilities at oil fields, according to memorandum signed at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Thursday.

These [bitcoin mining data centers] will either be at new oil fields where transportation infrastructure has not been set up, or remote sites where the transport is too expensive, the statement said.

"Over the next two years, BitRiver intends to implement projects to create its own data centers for power-intensive computing with power scaling up to 2 [gigawatts], including [associated petroleum gas], which will additionally provide high and stable power consumption," Igor Runets, founder and CEO of BitRiver, said in Thursday's statement.