“One of the largest NYT shareholders, Carlos Slim, currently owns 8% of NYT’s class A shares. He is the eleventh-richest person in the world with a net worth of $86 billion, making him the richest person in Latin America. In 2009, he loaned the NYT $250 million.””His second eldest son manages the family’s business, is a member of Grupo Carso’s board of directors, and is a member of BlackRock’s board of directors. BlackRock is the second-largest investor of the NYT, holding 8.67% of class A shares.””Slim owns Carso Energy, which operates two critical Wahalajara pipelines that bring Texas natgas to Mexico — originating from the Waha hub, in west Texas. Waha is a critical supply hub for Permian Basin natural gas producers.””Carso Energy’s pipelines are designed to transport and sell over 1 Bcf/d of natgas per day to Mexico’s state-owned power plants. Thus, the Waha hub is one of the most important pricing points for natural gas in Mexico.””Permian Basin shale oil wells produce a lot of associated natgas. So much that it overwhelms takeaway capacity, causing record low prices in the Waha benchmark. Prices have gone negative 20 times in the last 3 years.””Extremely low natgas prices are a problem for midstream pipeline operators because it becomes more profitable to mine Bitcoin than to build infrastructure to transport natgas. This results in reduced profits for midstream companies that benefit from increased natgas transport.””Research indicates that using large flexible loads, such as those favored by Bitcoin mining operations, can have a net decarbonizing effect on grids over the long term, which would translate to reduced natgas profits.””Research also indicates that “widespread adoption of demand response may not be viewed favorably by… owners of peaking plants” who will “likely see their capacity factors decrease as demand response takes over…”””ERCOT’s Brad Jones has publicly affirmed that Bitcoin mining has already played a major role in bringing renewables into the Texas grid, by supporting the financials of solar and wind and soaking up their excess generation when demand is low.””The Oil and Gas industry has heavily lobbied to introduce multiple bills, in the Texas Senate, to promote natgas interests and single out Bitcoin miners taking part in ERCOT demand response.””We may never know if Slim influenced the editorial process in the newspaper’s latest hit piece attacking Bitcoin mining. However, it would fit an ongoing pattern of The New York Times protecting Slim’s business interests in addition to patterns of alleged, calculated, systemic bias and distortions.”
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