Turkmen gas in underground stocks of China - exhausted gas fields rebuilt into storage facilities
Last week, the underground gas storage facilities of the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing began to be filled with the first batches of gas, which overcame thousands of kilometers on the way from Turkmenistan, as Reuters reports. In the next six months, the state energy giant PetroChina will add gas from Myanmar to the vast reservoirs located at a depth of 3000 meters under the mountaintops. Taking these measures, the Chins is aimed at preventing shortages in the winter peak period of consumption amid the transition to environmentally friendly natural gas and total rejection of coal. Another goal is to give the depleted wells of gas fields a "second life", turning them into gas storage facilities, which will subsequently be injected with imported gas. After all, the available capacity can provide only 5% of the total gas consumption. However, the construction of underground gas storage infrastructure from scratch is an enterprise comparable to the development of the field, that is, labor-intensive, both in terms of human and temporary resources, and, accordingly, expensive. PetroChina specialists see economically acceptable solution in utilization of wells in depleted oil and gas deposits. Of course, the arrangement of storage facilities at such locations also requires a lot of time. For two years, the well is tested for oil and gas and water residues, and then another three years spent on designing and planning. In the next 5-8 years, the company intends to invest in construction of such facilities more than $ 10 billion. And this will eventually double underground reserves. Currently, the PRC operates 25 UGS, providing gas to more than 200 million people. Total capacity of the storages is equal to 11.7 billion cu m. By 2020, this figure is expected to reach 14.8 billion and by 2035 - up to 35 billion cu m.
