The Oil Drum: Europe

Luis,

Nat gas storage is now done both in salt caverns and previous nat gas fields (ref. Rough in UK).

You are talking about LNG (Liquified Natural Gas); which is mainly methane (CH4) that is liquefied, i.e. cooled down to approx minus 163 centigrades before shipment. LNG needs regasification plants. It is possible to store LNG, but these facilities (and the regasification facilities) are expensive and subject to a high NIMBY factor. Of course you could ship LNG and store it close to the consumers during the summerseason, reagsify it, compress and store it in salt caverns/previous nat gas fields.

This adds to the cost and complexity of the supply chain, and more importantly reduces the amount of useful energy available as these are also energyconsuming processes, which of course adds to the required import volume of LNG.

Still a factor of close to 3 seems reasonable to apply to your “back of the envelope” estimate above.

Do you have any reference to nat gas storage in “empty aquifers”?

So far the size of the methane (CH4) molecule has not caused serious problems for storage facilities.

Another $0,02 from me, so now I have in total thrown in..... $0,04.

Rgds
NGM2