Tightness Analysis of Underground Natural Gas and Oil Storage Caverns With Limit Pillar Widths in Bedded Rock Salt

Abstract

To fully utilize the abandoned salt cavern resources and to increase the total amount of the fossil energy reserve of China, reconstructing some of these salt caverns for underground gas storage (UGS) or strategic petroleum reserve (SPR) would be an effective method. The salt resources in China mainly are bedded salt, which brings great challenges for the cavern construction and safety evaluation. In this paper, the investigations are presented to evaluate the tightness of the UGS and SPR salt cavern facilities, located in the bedded rock of Jintan, China. Microcosmic analysis, and permeability and porosity tests of the surrounding rock are carried out to determine their properties, which provide the basic data for the tightness assessment. A 3-D numerical model is developed based on the test results and the geological features of the target formation. The numerical simulation results show that the seepage velocity, seepage range and loss rate of leakage of the SPR salt caverns are much smaller than those of UGS salt caverns. The cavern's pillar width with a pillar to diameter ratio (P/D) of 1.5 can satisfy the tightness requirement of SPR salt caverns, but it cannot meet the requirement of UGS caverns. This indicates that some existing abandoned salt caverns in Jintan which are unsuitable for UGS due to their small pillar width have the potential to be rebuilt for SPR. This would help to increase the storage capacity of crude oil in China. The results can also provide a reference for the implementation of similar projects in other bedded salt districts.

Keywords

• Bedded rock salt
• underground gas storage
• strategic petroleum reserve
• tightness
• seepage