Research on Construction and Operation Parameters of an Underground Oil Storage in Depleted Salt Caverns in the East of China
Authors: Jin Fu , Xi Wang , Mingming Ding , Guobin Yang , Shunyuan Zhang , Bingshan Liu , Chen Chen 
Published: October 2021

The crude oil price has been keeping at a low level in recent years, which made China's government put more efforts in the development of underground oil storages in depleted salt caverns. Under the initiative of "the Belt and Road", a more concrete concept which is "the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road" successfully connects Jiangsu Province in the east of China. Consisting of 20 depleted caverns, Huai'an project that is still under planning is one of the most successful examples that turn depleted salt caverns into underground crude oil storages in China. Each cavern takes up 24×104m3, while the project totally takes up 480×104m3.

TDMA algorithm was adopted to solve the heat exchange model of oil, brine and surrounding rocks, revealing the relationship between temperature and cavern pressure. Salt rock safety factor, salt cavern shrinkage ratio, axial stress and ground subsidence were taken into consideration to establish a 3-dimension salt rock creep model for 19 depleted salt caverns, so that the caverns’ shapes were optimized. Hydrodynamics models were used to determine the oil's flow rate into and out of a 1000m deep cavern whose thermal field was simulated by software to reveal the temperature limit of oil and brine.

Due to geothermal gradient and continuous heat transmission, the average temperature of oil and brine goes up from 35°C to 44.3°C within 7 years, while the inner pressure goes up from 12.96MPa to 21.93MPa in a depleted salt cavern. Salt creep ratio decreases as oil is stored in underground caverns for a longer period. Salt is hardly penetrated by oil, while the temperature change has a strong influence on caverns’ internal pressure. The thermal expansion factor and compressibility coefficient of crude oil and brine are both crucial to the temperature's effect on internal pressure. Caverns that have larger segments in their upper-middle or middle parts are more stable and resistant to salt creep than those that have larger segments in their lower parts. When oil is injected or pumped out, it is necessary to make the internal pressure lower than the static pressure of surrounding rocks. Hence, the most appropriate flow rate of crude oil is 4.5m/s. Crude oil that is stored in deep salt caverns may be heated up to 60°C due to the geothermal gradient, but the flammable gas in oil is rapidly gasified or even explodes when it is pumped out to the surface. To avoid accidents and air pollution, oil is cooled down before being delivered via pipelines.

Oil tanks used to be applied by scale in China, however they are too obvious on the ground to comply with national strategic energy safety. Compared with oil tanks of similar volumes, the Huai'an underground oil storages may save the overall cost by 35.3%. It is the first time that the salt rock creep model is established in depleted salt caverns, while the conclusion overthrew the common preference of regular cylindrical caverns.