Gas storage

In the course of marine transport, necessary land storage requires double-walled tanks with special insulation. Such tanks may have unit volumes of as much as 50,000 cubic metres (1,766,000 cubic feet). The low temperatures attained require the use of special steels with a high nickel content or aluminum-base alloys. Because the problem of heat loss is less important at ports of arrival, where the liquid gas has to be vaporized, frozen-earth tanks, consisting of enormous holes dug in the ground and made leakproof by freezing the groundwater, are used.

Storage facilities on a more extensive scale have been created by using depleted oil or gas reservoirs near consumption centres (northeastern United States, northern Italy), or by the creation of artificial gas fields in aquifer layers. The latter technique developed rapidly, and the number of storage facilities of this type in the United States has increased tremendously since 1950. There are a number of such underground storage areas in France, Germany, and the U.S.S.R.