FRACTURE-STIMULATION TECHNOLOGY FOR GAS-STORAGE WELLS

摘要

Since introduction of Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Order 636, the fundamental role of the interstate gas-transportation business has changed from that of intermediary between producer and consumer to that of a service provider. Further, because these services are now unbundled and cannot be lumped into the supplier rate base, pipeline companies must now provide each of their services individually and at increasingly competitive prices. Some of these services include gas transportation, market-center hub services (e.g., balancing, compression, loaning, parking, peaking, trading), and gas storage. Gas storage is used for two primary purposes: to meet seasonal winter demands for natural gas (base-load storage) and to meet short-term peaks in demand (peaking storage), which can range from a few hours to a few days. For purely peak demand, cavern storage has become increasingly popular because of the extremely high deliverability that can be achieved, albeit only for short periods of time. Base-load storage facilities, for which depleted oil/gas fields are frequently used, can store larger volumes of gas but usually have smaller overall deliverability capacities. Nevertheless, minimum deliverability requirements exist for base-load storage facilities.