US Homeland Adopts Blockchain To Track Oil Imports

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently contracted a Canadian enterprise blockchain firm named Mavennet to build a cross-border oil tracking platform. The blockchain news today show that US Homeland is ready to adopt blockchain and build a high end cross-border oil tracking platform.

The initial funding is from the Silicon Valley Innovation Program (SVIP) and will be processed through DHS and its Science and Technology Directorate. The news show that $182,700 is the amount of the contract which will see US Homeland and the Mavennet retrofit its existing oil tracking platforms which will be used by the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) branch of DHS at the Canadian border.

The project is also targeting a massive cross border import market. America is is the largest importer of oil in Canada which moves at least 120,000,000 barrels of crude oil per month through the first half of 2019, the government data shows.

Mavennet is years away from covering the broad market. The company will use the early funding to build a proof-of-concept demo for CBP. This could continue on through up to two years of demonstrations and pilot programs before the field testing and during SVIP’s fourth and final phase.

The CEO of Mavennet talked about the US Homeland adopting blockchain. He said that his company has been working in the space since 2015, including developing an on-chain natural gas platform for the Toronto Montreal Exchange.

“This project is a strong building block to help a much needed digital transformation of the O&G space, which is the big picture we are after,” he said, being confident that the DHS project will help the industry further.

The technical director at SVIP also talked about this and said that the Mavennet platform and its “digital auditability” could be critical as the web-based identification standards continue developing.

“Accurately tracking the evidence of oil flow through pipelines and refinement between the U.S. and Canada and attributing oil imports with the accurate composition and country of origin are of great interest to CBP,” John stated.

The investment also marks the latest blockchain space play. Before this, the R&D focused fund awarded Texas and its Factom with nearly $200,000 to deploy their blockchain secured cameras and sensors throughout the US borders.