scope:

This Recommended Practice (RP) provides the functional recommendations for salt cavern facilities used for natural gas storage service and covers facility geomechanical assessments, cavern well design and drilling, risk management, solution mining techniques and operations, including monitoring and maintenance practices, site security and safety, procedures, training, and abandonment.

This RP is based on the accumulated knowledge and experience of geologists, engineers, and other operations personnel in the petroleum and gas storage industries and promotes public safety by providing a comprehensive set of design guidelines. This RP recognizes the nature of subsurface geological diversity and stresses the need for in-depth, site specific geomechanical assessments with a goal of long-term facility integrity and safety.

This RP includes the cavern well system (wellhead, wellbore, and cavern) from the emergency shutdown (ESD) valve down to the cavern and facilities having significant impact to safety and integrity of the cavern system.

This RP does not apply to caverns used for the storage of liquid or liquefied petroleum products, brine production, or waste disposal; hydrogen, or compressed air, nor to caverns which are mechanically mined, or depleted hydrocarbon or aquifer underground gas storage systems.

This document is intended to supplement, but not replace, applicable local, state, and federal regulations.