Despite this, the rules still allow lower-pressure fracking of the kind planned at West Newton.
Stephen Williams, the other co-chief executive at Reabold, said that while Bitcoin mining might be the first activity, it could be followed by the development of a larger data centre as more wells were drilled.
“Alternatively, we could also sell the gas to one of the adjacent industrial centres or connect it to the national gas grid,” he said.
However, the most likely outcome is that once it has permission in place to develop the field, along with planning permissions for any data centre, Reabold will sell the project to a larger firm.
It has already used a similar strategy in the North Sea, winning permits for developing the Victory field before selling the rights to Shell for £32m.
The West Newton field lies just north of Hull and the scale of the reserve first emerged when Mr Oza and Mr Williams’s team re-examined data collected by geologists in the 1940s when the wartime government was searching for domestic energy sources.
Further studies since then have been followed by preliminary drilling from a concrete pad built across farmland above.
However, the rock beneath is not as porous as the best reserves and will require “stimulation”, industry jargon for fracking.
The search for Bitcoin is becoming one of the most profitable and energy-intensive global activities, last year estimated to consume 160 terawatt hours of electricity. That’s about 50pc of the UK’s entire annual consumption.
“Owning” a Bitcoin means you have a mathematical password to a blockchain – a kind of spreadsheet – that allows you to sell your cryptocurrency to someone else.
Like all currencies, its worth depends on the belief and trust people place on it but for many users, the real value is that Bitcoin is decentralised.
This means it is held independently of any bank, is effectively invisible to governments and can be moved around the world at will.