ABSTRACT
This paper focuses on understanding the gas trans-
port properties in rock salt which serves as host rock
for deep underground storages for hydrocarbons. To
exclude a risk regarding terms of safety and envi-
ronmental protection, the host rock’s integrity has to
be guaranteed during construction, operation and in
the post-closure phase. Consequently, the contribu-
tion of the geological barrier to the safety of a re-
pository has to be assessed by study of its natural
characteristics, i.e. of the coupled fluid mechanical
properties. Since the gas transport properties of rock
salt are responsible for the required hydraulical in-
tegrity, knowledge about the relationship between
the developments of stress respectively gas pressure
induced damage and permeability is of utmost im-
portance, which is firstly reviewed in our paper.
