Recovery by EOR Technologies
United States will recover more than 300 Billion Barrels of Oil through
What is Salt Dome Storage?
Natural gas, crude oil and other fuels have been stored in underground salt domes and salt caverns for nearly seventy years. There are many reasons that salt domes and salt caverns are used for natural gas storage as well as crude oil storage and storage of other petroleum based hydrocarbons. Chief among these are that salt dome storage provide; energy/fuel efficiencies, security, safety, strategic supply solutions, ability to meet peak demand requirements, cost-savings and protection from; fire, vandalism, hurricanes, tornados, acts of terrorism and all with extremely low environmental risk.
dome storage and salt caverns provides the lowest cost solution for crude oil
storage and natural gas
storage (and other hydrocarbons) and represents an environmentally-secure method for storing
America's energy resources for very long periods of time. For example, storing crude oil in artificially-created salt caverns deep within the rock-hard salt costs historically about $3.50 per barrel in capital costs.
Crude oil storage in above-ground tanks, by comparison, can cost $15 to $18 per barrel - or at least five times the expense.
Because salt caverns are 2,000 to 4,000 feet below the surface, geologic pressures will seal any/all cracks that
may develop in the salt formation, assuring that no crude oil leaks from the cavern. An added benefit is the natural temperature difference between the top of the caverns and the bottom - a distance of around 2,000 feet; the temperature differential keeps the crude oil continuously circulating in the caverns, giving the oil a consistent quality.
How are salt caverns created?
Salt caverns are "carved" from underground salt domes by a technology called "solution mining." Solution mining involves a process whereby a well is drilled into an underground salt formation and then injecting large volumes of fresh water. The water dissolves the salt. In creating the salt caverns, the dissolved salt was removed as brine and either re-injected into salt water disposal wells or, alternatively, may be piped several miles offshore into the Gulf of Mexico. By carefully controlling the pressure and direction of the freshwater injection process, salt caverns of very precise dimensions can be created.
How does salt dome storage contain the oil or natural gas?
Rock salt has a combination of characteristics that make it very attractive for the storage of crude oil and natural gas as well as other petroleum fuels. If the rock salt is relatively pure and does not contain significant amounts of other types of rock, it is generally impervious to both liquids and gases and inert to petroleum. Rock salt has a compression strength comparable to concrete under the weight of the overlying and surrounding rock. Rock salt will "move" like plastic to seal incipient fractures, and can be mined easily by dissolving it with water.
Enhanced Oil Recovery revenues nearly DOUBLED,
in just 4 years from $54.96 billion in 2007 to
$102.02 billion in 2011!
/ Gas EOR
technologies lead all other
Enhanced Oil Recovery technologies with 43% of market.
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars every year for
oil, much of it from the Middle East, is just about the single stupidest
thing that modern society could possibly do. It’s very difficult to
think of anything more idiotic than that.”
~ R. James Woolsey, Jr., former Director of the CIA
According to R. James Woolsey, for Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, “The basic insight is to realize that global warming, the geopolitics of oil, and warfare in the Persian Gulf are not separate problems — they are aspects of a single problem, the West’s dependence on oil.”
American jobs. American Energy Independence. Keep the 1/2 Trillion dollars in America we now send to OPEC and foreign countries each year to buy the oil America needs. And most importantly, to save the lives of America's brave soldiers, sailors and airmen fighting & dying for muslim oil.
Salt Dome Storage
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