ÇAĞRILI KONUŞMALAR / KEYNOTES Invited Speeches ... - TPJD

Reservoir Management of Underground Gas Storages and Online
Monitoring of Compressor Units
Dirk Heyer 1 , Bernd Schmidt 1 , Michael Klafki 2 , Andreas Bannach 2
1 PSE
2 ESK
Part 1 RESERVOIR MANAGEMENT OF UNDERGROUND STORAGES: Advanced monitoring
techniques are used for detail reservoir analysis, long-term storage observation and planning of
strategic storage operation. Furthermore, the prevention of gas losses and the maintenance of
storage integrity are continuous tasks of reservoir monitoring. By permanent operational data
acquisition and accompanied analysis, well behaviour as well as reservoir storage process can be
observed. Applying numerical 3D reservoir models for history matching of measured pressure and
flow data enables to simulate the real storage process. Changes in areal saturation distribution
can be visualised by 3D seismic. Gas reservoirs with high saturated formations can be influenced
by salt precipitation effects and requires additional investigations. Thermodynamical and
geomechanical aspects must be considered in salt caverns. During withdrawal period in partly
high pressure areas with low temperatures there is a permanent danger of hydrate formation
which can lead to extreme limitation in the storage performance. The salt convergence yields
to reduction of storage volume/capacity of gas caverns and must be carefully monitored. The
currently available tools and applied techniques for gas storage monitoring have reached high
scientific quality. Because of the general complexity of the whole subsurface process the need of
further development of monitoring aspects will be finally presented.
Part 2 SAFETY AND ONLINE MONITORING ON RECIPROCATING COMPRESSORS AS A “STATE OF
THE ART” MAINTENANCE TOOL, REDUCES OPERATION COSTS: Since decades, salt cavern and
aquifer storages contribute to Europe’s supply security. From the early beginnings up to now, the
storage requirements in respect of volume and availability have dramatically changed. In former
times, the storages have been used only to handle the supply peaks in winter time, but now
they are also trading instruments in the unbundled gas market. A flexible and stable operation
of the installed compressors becomes of more and more importance. Nowadays reciprocating
compressors are often installed at natural gas storages. High requirements for availability and
reliability on the compression equipment are essential for the cost effective operation. Onlinemonitoring
systems with safety shutdown functionality are “State of the art” tools to achieve
those technical and commercial goals. A short excurse into the reciprocating compressor
technology and online monitoring systems solutions!
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