Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Mark McGrail on July 21, 2013 at 12:22am

Instead of taking gas out, they pump gas into the ground.

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Permalink Reply by landlubber on July 21, 2013 at 1:05am

In places where salt underground has been removed gas can be put there.Because the salt was there it prooves there is no fault connecting to a water supply.

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Permalink Reply by Mark McGrail on July 21, 2013 at 1:26am

I forgot about salt mines

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Permalink Reply by Brian Powers on July 21, 2013 at 1:58am

Philip-in my career, I saw two methods of storage. For NGL's in the mid continent U.S., caverns were leached into thick salt deposits using fresh water. Since the salt was impermeable, no product leaked off and when needed, the NGL was simply pumped from the cavern.

On a project that I worked in the Middle east, the formation was a naturally fractured carbonate (limestone). We processed wet gas to remove liquids and compressed and re-injected the dry gas downhole into three wells. When needed, the piping existed to allow us to bypass the gas plant and deliver this excess gas directly to sales. We had to carefully monitor the gas stream to ensure that no new liquids had been absorbed into the dry gas. When that happened, the gas was put back through the plant.

 

I cannot see the ultra-tight shales ever being of sufficient quality for gas storage.

 

I hope this helps,

 

Brian

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Permalink Reply by PHILIP ANGELO on July 21, 2013 at 4:50am

Thank You Brian.

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Permalink Reply by Inchworm antenna on July 21, 2013 at 3:18pm

the gas is injected and pressurized into the pore space within rock, for example old sand stone formations from shallow gas fields.  Even though gas was taken out years ago, that pore space can be reused to store gas from other formations or areas.  

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Permalink Reply by Brian Powers on July 21, 2013 at 3:40pm

Inchworm -

you are correct that shallow, depleted sandstone reservoirs can make excellent storage fields, but the operator using them must ensure bone dry gas in  injected. Any entrained oxygen becomes very corrosive to carbon steel pipeline, casing, compressor components, etc. Also, depending upon the depth of the storage formation and the gas properties, in addition to the desired volumes, the gas may have to be compressed to inject and again to recover from storage, the compression alone may be an expensive proposition, indeed.

 

Brian

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Permalink Reply by Tony Yurina on July 21, 2013 at 3:55pm

The major transmission and storage pipeline companies in the Ohio, WV, PA and NE in  general use depleted production fields as Inchworm antenna has indicated.  Sometimes they add wells to the existing field for additional deliverability.  

Other parts of the country use the salt dome cavern storage as Brian Powers outlined. These storage  caverns have a tremendous rapid deliverability, the drawback is when they are empty, you have no gas left in storage.

The traditional sand/limestone formation storage wells are best suited for longer term deliverabilty though out a long winter heating season.  

From my perspective, the shales produce an unacceptable amount of brine and water to dispose of, this fact alone would make such a storage field operation a very expansive and costly operation as compared to the traditional methods/well fields.
Technology in the future could change this scenario, but for now, shale storage is doubtful. 

The whole reason for storage in the Midwest and NE was due to past pipeline constraints, to serve the Midwest, NE and East Coast markets, storage capacity was needed reasonably close to move the Gulf gas into the near term storage fields where winter heating season withdrawal could supplement the maximum pipeline carrying capacity from the Gulf, Canadian and Oklahoma basins.... Now that the shale volumes are being produced near the large market areas, storage may become  a lessor factor since the Gulf gas is 1. expensive to transport to the NE, 2. not all the southwest pipelines will be needed due to the influx of shale gas close to the major markets. 

You will see some of the existing southwest supply pipelines converted to liquid, and haul NGL's and ethane to the southwest for the petrochemical market. (and I hope exportation)

Now, shale storage could be a creative way to hold acreage if a lease allows it....... be aware...  

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Permalink Reply by Michael Allen on July 22, 2013 at 1:59pm

I have been involved in two salt dome natural gas storage facilities, one in Arizona and one in Utah. Both facilities were formed by using a water borne drill system to make the dome(s). They start about 1500 feet under the surface before starting the procedure. Both sites were about 400 total acres and had more than one pipeline from different companies participating. The basic idea was to stock pile the natural gas for an end user at an agreed upon rate where the end user was betting the price would go up and if so, they would have the NG at a lower rate. On a NG project in Ohip that wasn't built, the Independence Pipeline Project, I was surprised that local governments didn't see the distinct advantage of floating a bond for a co-gen plant and sell cheap electricity to all of their local industry and co-op to their public. They could have cut the electricity costs by 50% and paid for the co-gen facility in 5-10 years with pure profit at the end. Instead, the Independence project was scrapped due to negative local input and politics. It could still happen for local governments to get the big picture, but it's almost too late for the auto industry component factories since alot of that business is going to Mexico and China.

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Permalink Reply by Tim Tarr on July 23, 2013 at 1:29am

Here is some info on storage in a depleated gas field in N. California (Wild Goose)

http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/Environment/info/ene/wild%20goose_phase%203/...

650 million cubic feet per day (MMcfd) of injection, 1,200 MMcfd of withdrawal, and 50 billion cubic feet (Bcf) of storage capacity.

I'm familiar with it because did some work there on Phase II. 

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