Bryan Mound Geomechanical Model Update
This report summarizes the recent updates of Sandia's computational model for geomechanical analysis of salt caverns at the Bryan Mound site, one of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserves.
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Underground Hydrogen Storage: Transforming Subsurface Science into Sustainable Energy Solutions
As the global economy moves toward net-zero carbon emissions, large-scale energy storage becomes essential to tackle the seasonal nature of renewable sources. Underground hydrogen storage (UHS) offers a feasible solution by allowing surplus renewable energy to be transformed into hydrogen and stored in deep geological formations such as aquifers, salt caverns, or depleted reservoirs, making it available for use on demand. This study thoroughly evaluates UHS concepts, procedures, and challenges. This paper analyzes the most recent breakthroughs in UHS technology and identifies special conditions needed for its successful application, including site selection guidelines, technical and geological factors, and the significance of storage characteristics. The integrity of wells and caprock, which is important for safe and efficient storage, can be affected by the operating dynamics of the hydrogen cycle, notably the fluctuations in pressure and stress within storage formations. To evaluate its potential for broader adoption, we also examined economic elements such as cost-effectiveness and the technical practicality of large-scale storage. We also reviewed current UHS efforts and identified key knowledge gaps, primarily in the areas of hydrogen–rock interactions, geochemistry, gas migration control, microbial activities, and geomechanical stability. Resolving these technological challenges, regulatory frameworks, and environmental sustainability are essential to UHS’s long-term and extensive integration into the energy industry. This article provides a roadmap for UHS research and development, emphasizing the need for further research to fully realize the technology’s promise as a pillar of the hydrogen economy.
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Storage, transmission and distribution of hydrogen
Current practices and future requirements for the storage, transmission and distribution of hydrogen are reviewed in order to identify inadequacies to be corrected before hydrogen can achieve its full potential as a substitute for fossil fuels. Consideration is given to the storage of hydrogen in underground solution-mined salt caverns, portable high-pressure containers and dewars, pressure vessels and aquifers and as metal hydrides, hydrogen transmission in evacuated double-walled insulated containers and by pipeline, and distribution by truck and internal distribution networks. Areas for the improvement of these techniques are indicated, and these technological deficiencies, including materials development, low-cost storage and transmission methods, low-cost, long-life metal hydrides and novel methods for hydrogen storage, are presented as challenges for research and development.
Kelley, J. H.↗
Grid Utility Energy Storage needed for 100% Clean Energy
Given two case scenarios of nuclear paired with a renewable energy source (solar and wind) to supply 100% energy to the grid, the form of energy storage most efficient and suitable to meet grid demand must be determined. This project examines batteries and hydrogen as solutions to this energy storage problem, specifically Li-Ion and Vanadium Redox Flow batteries, and hydrogen stored in compressed, liquid and salt caverns format.
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Experimental and numerical investigation into rapid cooling of rock salt related to high frequency cycling of storage caverns
High frequency cycling of salt caverns is becoming common practice to meet the needs of energy markets and to foster underground energy storage. In the case of rapid cooling, tensile stresses and thermally-induced fractures can appear in the surrounding rock, with potential detrimental consequences to the integrity of the storage project. To further investigate the effects of rapid cycles on the integrity of rock salt, a thermo-mechanical test was performed in a salt mine. It consisted in cooling rapidly several times a salt surface of 10 m 2 (Δ T =-20 °C in about 8 h). Extensive monitoring allowed tracking the thermo-mechanical response of the rock, including possible fracture creation and propagation. Although more research is needed, the test demonstrated that tensile fracturing due to rapid cooling is possible. Furthermore thermo-mechanical modeling allowed reproducing fairly well the location, orientation and timing of the first fracture; indeed, fractures should be avoided to ensure cavern integrity, and therefore knowledge about the critical zones where fractures could appear is sufficient at the design stage.
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November 2016 West Hackberry Subsidence Report
Subsidence monitoring is a critical component to understanding the cavern integrity of salt storage caverns. This report looks at historical and recent data from two of the three West Hackberry dome cavern operators. DOE SPR and LA Storage are coordinating subsidence surveys to create a comprehensive understanding of ground movement above the dome. Data from annual level and rod surveys, GPS, and tiltmeter data show the sites are experiencing typical ground movement. The highest subsidence rate is seen in the middle of the DOE SPR site at just under one inch per year with less ground movement around the edge of the site. A GPS and tiltmeter instrument in the northeast areas of the DOE SPR site has not seen any trend change since the devices were installed in 2013. Comparison between recent ground movement data and historical trends suggest that there is no reason to believe that any DOE SPR or LA Storage caverns have been structurally compromised.
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September 2016 Bayou Choctaw Subsidence Report
Subsidence monitoring is a crucial component to understanding cavern integrity of salt storage caverns. This report looks at historical and current data at the Bayou Choctaw Strategic Petroleum Reserve Site. Data from the most recent land-based annual surveys, GPS, and tiltmeter indicate the subsidence rates across the site are approximately 0.0 ft./yr. Because of this, there is no evidence from the subsidence survey to suggest any of the DOE caverns have been structurally compromised.
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May 2019 West Hackberry Subsidence Analysis
Subsidence monitoring is a crucial component to understanding cavern integrity of salt storage caverns. This report looks at the historical and current subsidence monitoring program and includes interpretation of the data from the West Hackberry Strategic Petroleum Reserve and LA Storage sites. Given data from current level-and-rod surveys, GPS, and tiltmeter, we do not believe there are any structural integrity issues at the West Hackberry DOE and LA Storage sites.
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February 2020 Bayou Choctaw Subsidence Analysis
Subsidence monitoring is a crucial component to understanding cavern integrity of salt storage caverns. This report looks at the historical and current subsidence monitoring program and includes interpretation of the data from the Bayou Choctaw Strategic Petroleum Reserve site. The current monitoring program consists of an annual elevation survey as well as GPS and tiltmeter instruments above both Cavern 4 and Cavern 20. This year's level and rod survey indicates little subsidence across the site. In addition, the GPS and tiltmeter instruments do not indicate any substantial movement above caverns 4 and 20. As such, there is no reason to indicate any of the caverns at Bayou Choctaw have lost integrity.
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Identification of SPR Caverns with Multiple Oil Layers
This analysis shows that when lower density crude oil is injected into the top of an underground salt storage cavern containing more dense crude, separate oil phases can form and coexist indefinitely. This has been observed at the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve in spite of geothermal heating and natural convection, which tend to mix the contents of containers with significant vertical extent subjected to wall and bottom heating. Such persistent layering can create operational challenges for meeting delivery specifications if high-value, low-vapor pressure oil becomes trapped below incoming low-density, high-vapor pressure oil, effectively blocking access to the lower layers until the top layer is removed. Previous conceptual models assumed that the oil injection process mixed incoming oil with resident oil in a storage cavern, forming a single oil phase with relatively homogeneous properties. Here, a review of historical data from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve revealed that several caverns contain multiple oil layers. As a result, oil layering needs to be another variable considered when planning oil movements at SPR in order to optimize low-vapor pressure oil availability to assist in oil delivery blending.
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Strategic Petroleum Reserve Cavern Leaching Monitoring CY21
Th e U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is a crude oil storage system administered by the U.S. Department of Energy. The reserve consists of 60 active storage caverns located in underground salt domes spread across four sites in Louisiana and Texas, near the Gulf of Mexico. Beginning in 2016, the SPR started executing C ongressionally mandated oil sales. The configuration of the reserve, with a total capacity of greater than 700 million barrels ( MMB ) , re quires that unsaturated water (referred to herein as ?raw? water) is injected into the storage caverns to displace oil for sales , exchanges, and drawdowns . As such, oil sales will produce cavern growth to the extent that raw water contacts the salt cavern walls and dissolves (leaches) the surrounding salt before reaching brine saturation. SPR injected a total of over 45 MMB of raw water into twenty - six caverns as part of oil sales in CY21 . Leaching effects were monitored in these caverns to understand how the sales operations may impact the long - term integrity of the caverns. While frequent sonars are the most direct means to monitor changes in cavern shape, they can be resource intensive for the number of caverns involved in sales and exchanges. An interm ediate option is to model the leaching effects and see if any concerning features develop. The leaching effects were modeled here using the Sandia Solution Mining Code , SANSMIC . The modeling results indicate that leaching - induced features do not raise co ncern for the majority of the caverns, 15 of 26. Eleven caverns, BH - 107, BH - 110, BH - 112, BH - 113, BM - 109, WH - 11, WH - 112, WH - 114, BC - 17, BC - 18, and BC - 19 have features that may grow with additional leaching and should be monitored as leaching continues in th ose caverns. Additionally, BH - 114, BM - 4, and BM - 106 were identified in previous leaching reports for recommendation of monitoring. Nine caverns had pre - and post - leach sonars that were compared with SANSMIC results. Overall, SANSMIC was able to capture the leaching well. A deviation in the SANSMIC and sonar cavern shapes was observed near the cavern floor in caverns with significant floor rise, a process not captured by SANSMIC. These results validate that SANSMIC continues to serve as a useful tool for mon itoring changes in cavern shape due to leaching effects related to sales and exchanges.
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Geomechanical Simulation of Big Hill Strategic Petroleum Reserve - Calibration of Model Containing Shear Zone
A finite element numerical analysis model, that consists of a realistic mesh capturing the geometries of Big Hill (BH) Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) site using the multi-mechanism deformation (MD) salt constitutive model and including data taken daily of the wellhead pressure and level of the oil-brine interface, has been upgraded. The upgraded model contains the shear zone to examine the interbed behavior in a realistic manner. The salt creep rate is not uniform in the salt dome, and creep test data for BH salt is limited. Therefore, a model calibration is necessary to simulate the geomechanical behavior of the salt dome. Cavern volumetric closures of SPR caverns calculated from sonar survey reports are used for the field baseline measurement. The structure factor, A 2 , and transient strain limit factor, K 0 , in the M-D constitutive model are used for model calibration. An A 2 value obtained experimentally from the BH salt and K 0 value of WIPP salt are used as the baseline values. To adjust the magnitude of A 2 and K 0 , multiplication factors A 2 F and K 0 F are defined, respectively. The A 2 F and K 0 F values of the salt dome and salt drawdown layer of elements surrounding each SPR cavern have been determined through a number of back fitting analyses. The trendlines of the predictions and sonar data match up well for BH 101, 103, 104, 106, 110, 111, 112, and 113. The prediction curves are close to the sonar data for BH 102 and 114. However, the prediction curves for BH 105, 107, 108, and 109 are not close to the sonar data. An inconsistency was found in the sonar data, i.e. the volume measured later is larger than that before in some time intervals, even if the leached volume is taken into account, for BH 101, 104, 106, 107, and 112. Project discussions are needed to determine possibilities on how to resolve the issues and determine the best path forward for future computer modeling attempts.
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Geomechanical Simulation of Big Hill Strategic Petroleum Reserve (Model Calibration)
A finite element numerical analysis model has been constructed that consists of a realistic mesh capturing the geometries of Big Hill (BH) Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) site using the multi-mechanism deformation (M-D) salt constitutive model and including data taken daily of the wellhead pressure and level of the oil-brine interface. The salt creep rate is not uniform in the salt dome, and creep test data for BH salt is limited. Therefore, a model calibration is necessary to simulate the geomechanical behavior of the salt dome. Cavern volumetric closures of SPR caverns calculated from sonar survey reports are used for the field baseline measurement. The structure factor, A 2 , and transient strain limit factor, K o , in the M-D constitutive model are used for model calibration. An A 2 value obtained experimentally from the BH salt and K o value of WIPP salt are used as the baseline values. To adjust the magnitude of A 2 and K o , multiplication factors A2F and KOF are defined, respectively. The A2F and KOF values of the salt dome and salt drawdown layer of elements surrounding each SPR cavern have been determined through a number of back fitting analyses. The trendlines of the predictions and sonar data match up well for BH 101, 103, 104, 106, 110, 111, and 113. The prediction curves are close to the sonar data for BH 102 and 114. However, the prediction curves for BH 105, 107, 108, 109, and 112 are not close to the sonar data. An inconsistency was found in the sonar data, i.e. the sonar measurements of cavern volumes increase with time, during some periods for BH 101, 104, 106, 107, and 112. A follow-up report in 2019 will provide a resolution for these issues.
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Pre-Sinkhole Seismicity at the Napoleonville Salt Dome: Implications for Local Seismic Monitoring of Underground Caverns
The formation of a sinkhole at the Napoleonville salt dome located near Bayou Corne in Assumption Parish, Louisiana, was preceded by an increase in seismicity, as observed 10 km away by a continuously recording broadband seismic sensor. The seismicity rate in the days prior to the sinkhole formation contained hundreds of long-period events, some of which could be detected using a power detector (short-term to long-term energy ratio) tuned to the duration and frequency content of the seismicity. A characteristic of some of these events is a resonance near 0.4 Hz, which could be due to either an acoustic resonance within the brine-filled cavity or possibly due to unsteady fluid flow through a crack. In this work, a more exhaustive catalog was obtained using some of the events detected by the power detector as templates in a correlation detector. Furthermore, the full pre-sinkhole sequence of detections could offer lessons in remote monitoring of underground caverns.
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Evaluation of Energy Storage Potential of Unconventional Shale Reservoirs Using Numerical Simulation of Cyclic Gas Injection
Compressed air energy storage (CAES) stores energy as compressed air in underground formations, typically salt dome caverns. When electricity demand grows, the compressed air is released through a turbine to produce electricity. CAES in the US is limited to one plant built in 1991, due in part to the inherent risk and uncertainty of developing subsurface storage reservoirs. As an alternative to CAES, we propose using some of the hundreds of thousands of hydraulically fractured horizontal wells to store energy as compressed natural gas in unconventional shale reservoirs. To store energy, produced or “sales” natural gas is injected back into the formation using excess electricity and is later produced through an expander to generate electricity. To evaluate this concept, we performed numerical simulations of cyclic natural gas injection into unconventional shale reservoirs using cmg-gem commercial reservoir modeling software. We tested short-term (diurnal) and long-term (seasonal) energy storage potential by modeling well injection and production gas flowrates as a function of bottom-hole pressure. First, we developed a conceptual model of a single fracture stage in an unconventional shale reservoir to characterize reservoir behavior during cyclic injection and production. Next, we modeled cyclic injection in the Marcellus shale gas play using published data. Results indicate that Marcellus unconventional shale reservoirs could support both short- and long-term energy storage at capacities of 100–1000 kWe per well. The results indicate that energy storage in unconventional shale gas wells may be feasible and warrants further investigation.
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Geomechanical Evaluation of the Stability of Abandoned Cavern 4 in Bayou Choctaw Salt Dome.
Abstract not provided.
Park, Byoung↗
Subsurface H 2 Storage: A Williston Basin Commercial-Scale Resource Study
Poster for the 2024 NETL Resource Sustainability Project Review Meeting, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, April 2-4, 2024. This poster presents a commercial‑scale assessment of subsurface hydrogen storage potential in the North Dakota portion of the Williston Basin, evaluating saline formations, depleted oil and gas reservoirs, and salt formations. The study integrates laboratory characterization, reservoir simulation, and basinwide analysis to assess storage capacity, injectivity, recovery, and risks related to geochemical, microbial, and wellbore interactions. Results support the feasibility of large‑volume, secure hydrogen storage and provide a framework to guide future hydrogen commercialization and infrastructure development.
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Williston Basin Resource Study for Commercial-Scale Subsurface Hydrogen Storage
This closeout presentation summarizes a Department of Energy–funded study that evaluated whether large amounts of hydrogen can be safely stored underground in the North Dakota portion of the Williston Basin. The project combined lab testing, computer simulations, and basin‑wide analysis to assess saline formations, depleted oil and gas reservoirs, and salt formations for hydrogen storage capacity, recovery, and risks. Results show that underground hydrogen storage is technically feasible across multiple formation types, with depleted oil and gas reservoirs offering higher recovery and saline formations providing large long‑term storage potential. The study also identifies key challenges—such as wellbore material durability and gas purity management—and recommends pilot projects and further site‑specific studies to support future commercialization.
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