Storage types

As a natural mineral resource, natural gas can be stored in various ways in suitable underground facilities within the solid earth's crust. A premise for this is a reliable sealing rock surface layer, including both a porous and permeable reservoir rock and a rock structure that allows natural gas to accumulate in the tiny pore spaces of the rocks.

Both, former natural gas reservoirs (pore reservoirs) and comparable water-filled geological situations (aquifers), can be used for natural gas storage. Another storage option for gases and liquids is in so-called salt caverns.

Pore storages

Pore storage facilities use the pores of underground rock layers to store gas. These may be former natural gas/oil deposits or aquifers (water-saturated rock strata). Pore storage facilities have usually high storage volumes and moderate injection and withdrawal rates. Therefore, they are suitable as long-term storage facilities for balancing the demand gap between the summer and winter months.

Porestorage facilities operated by Storengy in Germany:

- Fronhofen close to  Pfullendorf / Baden-Württemberg

- Schmidhausen close to  Rosenheim / Bavaria

- Uelsen close to  Nordhorn / Lower Saxony

Cavern storages

Cavities, which are artificially created in the massive rock of salt domes by brining, are used as cavern storages. With diameters of about 50 m, the individual caverns can reach a height of more than 300 m. With their limited working gas volume, but high withdrawal rates, cavern storage facilities are suitable for flexible and short-term coverage of consumption peaks.

Cavern storage facilities operated by Storengy in Germany:
- Harsefeld close to Stade / Lower Saxony
- Lesum close to  Bremen / Bremen
- Peckensen close to  Salzwedel / Saxony Anhalt