Development of an Integrated Risk Management and Decision-Support System (IRMDSS) for Assuring the Integrity of Underground Natural Gas Storage Infrastructure in California

Studies have concluded that underground natural gas storage (UGS) in California has served a critical role in meeting winter heating and summer cooling demands and will continue to serve this role for the foreseeable future. As a result, to guarantee energy reliability in California, it is crucial to ensure the safety and integrity of UGS infrastructure. The purpose of this project is to develop an Integrated Risk Management and Decision-Support System (IRMDSS) to improve loss of containment risk management for the subsurface components of UGS, specifically wells and caprock integrity. The risk management framework is built on a combination of advanced monitoring technologies and physics-based mechanistic simulation tools, taking advantage of the prediction capability of advanced mechanistic models, and (near) real-time monitoring data collected in the field to provide leading indicators of imminent risk, early leakage detection, or long-term assessment of potential risk. In addition, a supervisory interface is developed to integrate system components and to perform analyses using models and monitoring data, along with visualization of data and model results. The analysis is used to provide the key information needed to support evidence-based and defensible decision-making. The tools developed in the IRMDSS can be subsequently used in evaluating mitigation strategies. The IRMDSS is expected to provide greater energy reliability, lower costs from failure or incidents, and increased safety for underground gas storage. The project is in collaboration with Southern California Gas Company which provided its Honor Rancho Gas Storage Facility for the IRMDSS development and demonstration.