ABSTRACT
Sealing a solution-mined cavern in a salt formation that has been used for mineral production, hydrocarbon storage, or waste disposal has been a contemporary topic for many years. As a result of knowledge gained from a series of succinct sealed well and cavern field tests performed in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Gaz de France, issues related to the abandonment of salt caverns became more focused. The main difficulty of the abandonment problematic is linked to fluid pressure increase in the cavern after sealing. This phenomenon is the result of different factors that interact with each other: creep, heat transfer, dissolution, percolation, for instance. All these factors must be taken into account for designing the abandonment process. This paper will discuss these factors and will highlight their practical impacts on a deep salt cavern abandonment experiment (1500 meters deep). First measurements will be also presented.
