News 25 October 2019

End Of De-Brining- A truly international success story

Tuesday the 8th October 2019 with the end of de-brining of well H301 marked the end of a truly International success story.

SMC

Tuesday the 8th October 2019 with the end of de-brining of well H301 marked the end of a truly International success story. Starting with the drilling of 10 wells and construction of the Solution Mining Complex in 2008 through the subsequent leaching and Completions of the twenty storage caverns was a complex multi-discipline team effort.

Storengy's Well Service Department provided the well engineering technical support from drilling through to snubbing of the wells. Throughout the Project Storengy's Well Service Department displayed their outstanding technical expertise in sub-surface engineering and work-over management skills.

The solution mining team from Storengy's Expertise Centre in France confirmed their world leading expertise in cavern design and formation. Constantly monitoring and mentoring the leaching teams they have passed on a “little” of their vast technical expertise and knowledge to the Stublach team. The results are remarkable with 20 well shaped caverns produced with the minimum of work overs/interventions.

The above two teams with support from the Expertise Centre through a combination of sound geological and technical skill mastered the different and difficult geology at Stublach. By applying their proven skills and innovation they reduced the number of required caverns from 28 to 20, saving some £80m from the initial estimates.

However none of this would have been possible without the without the UK teams who designed, built, operated and maintained the Solution Mining surface assets to tight demanding targets in an open, difficult and at times hostile weather conditions. Throughout managing to avoid conflicts with our neighbours and enhance the natural environment of the site.

Special thanks must go to the operating and maintenance teams who by their professionalism and diligence achieved a hundred percent operating performance. Not once in 10 years failing to supply the four main downstream Customers with brine despite the large scale swings in demand and tight specifications especially when de-brining.

John O'Donnell

Safety – No LTA

Environmental- no incidents

Brine pumped- 63Mm3

Cavern free volume- 6.7Mm3

Salt mined -15M tonnes

Leaching interventions-average of 2.2 per well

John O'Donnell Cavity Conversion Manager