UK reopens large gas storage site

A bit of common sense in a mad world

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63423600

also has the potential to be one of the biggest storage facilities around

Edited By Ady1 on 28/10/2022 17:19:36

I do wonder what the %recovery is from this method ie output/input. equals ?

I was imagining metal storage tanks?

Tony

This is quite a good explanatory article; note the embedded link as well, which might not show up very well depending on screen contrast.
https://watt-logic.com/2022/08/08/re-opening-rough-gas-storage/
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a0c1010ed915d0ade60db73/rough-gas-storage-undertakings-review-provisional-decision-15.11.17.pdf

Bill

That might explain why so many gas ships are parked up around Europe at the moment, most European gas storage facilities are near full so somewhere to offload could be very useful or maybe they are waiting for the price to rise again.

Mike

It's near enough 100% recovery as long as it's in operation, when it eventually closes again they will loose some gas right at the end that's unfeasible to extract, but even then (depending on the exact geology of the formation) you might only be talking 10% of the last "fill".

The reason it closed in 2017 was that the cost of doing workovers on all the wells to keep it gas-tight was too expensive relative to the profit centrica was making from it... Now gas is expensive it makes complete sense financially, so they have paid for the work and they're away again.

I have to say is that it was unusually far sighted of Centrica's management team to keep paying to maintain the topside, pipeline and onshore processing facilities in mothballs rather than begin immediately stripping out to make them safe to stand until their shareholders were eventually ready to swallow the decommissioning bill.

It's rare to see that kind of good sense prevail in the boardroom these days, but I'm glad it did.

Edited By Jelly on 28/10/2022 20:57:51

Helps if you have friends in the right places, Amder Rudd is on it's board, a former conservative minister of energy etc.,

While we are being hammered by eco nuts, charities government councils politicians and civil servants about the need to ditch fossil fuels they are quite happy for the UK to be supplied by ships travelling thousands of miles carrying gas.or wood chips. Not so Green are we.really.

rThere was a scheme mooted probably more than 10 years ago to build a completely new storage site on Portland; actually below the island's NE coast.

The plan was to drill some 5000 feet down, if I recall correctly, to penetrate two very deep beds of early-Jurassic / late-Triassic age-age rocks, parts of the Mercia Mudstone Group. The upper, forming the storage cap-rock, is the dense, clay-like Mudstone itself. The lower, for the chambers, is a bed of rock-salt. Both rocks are impermeable and non-porous; and I presume surveying has shown no serious faults locally that could provide leak-paths; or they do exist but can be avoided.

Seawater would be pumped down to dissolve the salt to form huge chambers, with the brine returning via a second pipe or an annulus. Sea-water is not so concentrated it cannot dissolve a bit more of the same salt (don't tell the foodies it's the same); and the slightly enriched result would disperse safely and rapidly in the local tidal streams. The seas are not at all uniform anyway: they vary in salinity and temperature with depth and locality.

I do not know why, but in the event the scheme did not go ahead. However, another company has started looking again at this; and I think before the invasion of Ukraine threw everything into turmoil.

What the greens don't or won't recognise is that we can't stop using fossil fuels straight away, or we'd all freeze, and what industry we had left would grind to a standstill. If we put into law that we would reduce fossils by 5% per year every year that sounds manageable. Doesn't sound a lot but after 13 years we'd have halved it, and after another 13 we'd be down to 25%. Whilst I don't agree with their tactics, the Insulate Britain lot do have a point, that's got to be easy pickings. Then we can ban outdoor floodlighting, our local church is lit up all night. If it's a security issue put up some motion sensors, but in reality Mr Thief just needs to go round the back to be out of sight.

Anyone seen that report today that the National Trust has vetoed a small scale hydro plant. they need to wake up and smell the coffee. Hydro doesn't need the wind to be blowing, or the sun shining, and in winter we are rarely short of rain in the UK

Edited By duncan webster on 28/10/2022 23:26:36

Edited By duncan webster on 28/10/2022 23:27:17