Underground gas storage

Underground gas storage (UGS) is one of the important topics of the 21st century, in particular to ensure the security of energy supply in Europe. Two kinds of gas storage can be distinguished: UGS in salt caverns and storage of natural gas in the pore space of former hydrocarbon reservoir rocks, namely sandstone. In the latter case a tight caprock - shale, clay-, silt- or marlstone - has to prevent leakage of the UGS. Gesteinslabor is specialised in the investigation of the geomechanical properties of these rocks: their strength as well as permeability and threshold pressure. Together with information about the in situ stresses (gained by RACOS®) Gesteinslabor is able to develop a geomechanical model for the UGS.

So far Gesteinslabor did research about numerous pore space UGS in Europe's most important gas storage regions, namely the North German, the Molasse, the Vienna and the Pannonian basins. All our investigations supported the installation of save and secure UGS.