Case Study of the Pioneering Coring Preservation and Management of the First Underground Oil Storage in the Middle East Region

Abstract Underground Gas Storage (UGS) is considered a strategic method to balance the supply-demand chain of the energy required in a more economical and feasible way to save some of the storage challenges. The caverns were solution mined into subsurface salt domes, is the focus within the oil & gas industry over the past years. In the absence of caverns, in previous storage studies, oil was initially thought to be stored in porous sedimentary rock formations. Oil stored underground in geological formations is commonly kept in salt caverns. Salt caverns are engineered from naturally occurring salt domes and due to the plastic nature of the salt, it makes it both efficient & beneficial for the storage of crude oil due to its healing nature of any fractures rapidly due to the pressure nature 2000-4000 feet underground that may occur within the salt. Wells provide the mechanism for the transport of fluids (oil and brine) into and out of the caverns. The wells are constructed in such a way as to provide critical isolation of cavern fluids from the surface environment and groundwater. Studies resulted in proven results for the Salt cavern storage to be a safe, reliable, sustainable, and cost-effective method for storing hydrocarbons, including crude oil, Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) oil, and other refined products. One of the first steps in this project, requires many sets of lithological data analysis and experimenting and that is the focus of this paper. Extensive core acquisition program was required from well's surface depth till TD, in order to have a full overview/analysis done on all sort of lithological changes across the well for better understanding in executing the salt caverns project. This paper focuses mainly on the coring program for handling core samples from the acquisition process till the preservation and handling phase. This also includes all application challenges from planning, execution to the lessons learned and results/conclusion along with the coring new record runs achieved for the first time setting new possibilities in performance and efficiency delivered with 100% recovery rates.