Storage

Storage: buffer to meet peak demand

Fluxys offers capacity at its underground storage facility in Loenhout enabling suppliers to store natural gas during the summer and to build up a buffer to ensure the continuity of deliveries to their customers. Storage services include not only storage capacity but also injection capacity and sendout capacity to fill and empty the storage facilities.

 

Storage facility in Loenhout

Five of Fluxys’ customers currently make use of its storage facility at the underground storage in Loenhout, where high calorific gas is kept in buffer in aquifers. The working storage volume at Loenhout is 700 million normal cubic metres of natural gas.

In spring and summer grid users inject more natural gas into the grid than their customers can use. Part of this imported natural gas is sent to Loenhout, where it is first filtered, metered and compressed before being injected into the reservoir rock. After it has been stored in the reservoir rock for several months, in winter the natural gas cannot be injected straight back into the grid. Whilst underground, it absorbs sulphurous compounds and water, both of which must be removed first.

Expanding underground storage capacity at Loenhout

Since 2007, Fluxys has been carrying out work to gradually increase the workable storage capacity at Loenhout by 15% over a period of four years (2008-2011) from 600 million to 700 million cubic metres (total volume of 1.4 billion cubic metres). For the 2011-2012 storage season, Fluxys sold for the first time 700 million cubic meters of storage capacity. Utilisation flexibility of the underground storage facility has been enhanced: sendout capacity increased from 500,000 to 625,000 cubic metres an hour, in part, thanks to the construction of a new sendout platform, while injection capacity rised from 250,000 to 325,000 cubic metres an hour due to the construction of an additional compressor.

 

 

Contact

Huberte Bettonville
Tel.: +32 2 282 76 96
Fax: +32 2 282 02 50
E-mail: info.transport@fluxys.com

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