Carriço, Portugal:
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Storage and brine extraction
In 1999, the Portuguese government started construction of a gas storage facility in Carriço, 200km north of Lisbon, in order to strengthen the national natural gas supply system. Transgás, a government-run agency (today REN S.A.), tasked a European group led by the former Kavernen Bau- und Betriebs-GmbH with planning and construction of the facility. Since 2004, KBB Underground Technologies GmbH has been the general contractor for the project.
So far, five wells have been drilled and leached. At present, four caverns are used for gas storage, a fifth is being leached and will start gas storage operations in 2012.
Most of the brine produced is transported to a nearby salt production plant where the water is evaporated using excess heat and the sun. The caverns are located in a salt structure which belongs to the Dagorda formation at depths of 1,000 m to 1,500 m and have volumes ranging from 350,000 m³ to 650,000 m³.
The complex, challenging tasks in this project include building the cavern sites and roads, drilling the cavern wells, connecting media pipelines for fresh water, brine and natural gas, the EMSR installations for the cavern sites, completion for leaching and gas operations, plant operation, cavern well workover and initial gas filling.
