
Rendering of natural gas conversion plant planned for Williams County (Cerilon Corp.)
The United States government established a storage system for petroleum (Strategic Petroleum Reserve) after the 1970s energy crisis, allowing the feds to smooth out energy markets if the situation called for it. The SPR itself is pretty neat from an engineering perspective: it’s made up of four geological sites in Texas and Louisiana, which have 60 subterranean salt caverns with a capacity of 713.5 million barrels of petroleum. Basically, we just pump the stuff back into caves that we happen to own, and we keep tabs on it so we can pump it back out if we’re hard up for hydrocarbons. The reserves were at 401.8 million barrels as of May 30. However, the infrastructure on sites was installed from 1975 to 1990. Officials found that 70 percent of its equipment was exceeding its serviceable life as of 2016, and recent overpumping has caused stress on the rock.
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