Oil and Natural Gas Corp and GAIL (India) Ltd will set up the underground natural gas storage through a special purpose vehicle and the gas will act as a strategic storage and fallback support to provide supply security, a top government official said in New Delhi.
French consultants Gaz de France will assist in the project. GDF has vast experience in the field of developing and operating underground gas storage in different types of rock formations as well as depleted gas fields.
It owns and operates a large number of such storage facilities in France and other countries.
State-run gas utility GAIL floated a tender for a consultant to advise on the development of an underground natural gas storage facility either in porous media such as depleted oil or gas fields or in salt-leached caverns.
The former involves study of reservoir characteristics, geometry and native fluid features.
"We plan to create a strategic storage with natural gas reserves of up to 1 billion standard cubic meters," he said. Oil Industry Development Board has pledged an initial Rs 500,000 for the project study.
The GAIL tender states that the consultant will advise on the engineering aspects of underground storage technology and branch connections to transmission pipelines.
The project will be developed in two phases. Phase-1 includes preliminary identification of geological targets and sites suitable for underground storage.
If the Phase-I findings tell that underground storage is unviable in India, the project will be dropped. If not, then the Phase-II will begin with a detailed feasibility report from the consultant.
For the storage in depleted gasfields, the consultant must prepare a database by incorporating seismic data, well logs and other factors compatible with 3D reservoir simulation models.
