Rüstringen salt dome

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The Rüstringen salt dome is a salt dome on the outskirts of Wilhelmshaven in Lower Saxony . It is located in the Coldewei district and has been used since 1968 as a storage cavern for oil storage as part of the state crude oil reserve for Germany .

geology

The Northwest German Basin is criss-crossed with large accumulations of salt in the area of ​​the former Zechstein Basin , which formed around 260 million years ago. The Rüstringen salt dome in its current form was created around 80 million years ago in the form of a rock salt diapir . The salt deposit extends at a depth between 1100 meters and 5000 meters; the salt dome is therefore almost four kilometers high. It consists of salt rock which, due to its special chemical and physical properties, can only be dissolved with water and due to its crystal structure is solid and impermeable. These material properties are used to store crude oil reserves.

Cavern facility in Rüstringen

The caverns in the Rüstringen salt dome are operated by Nord-West Kavernengesellschaft mbH (NWKG), a 100% subsidiary of the Petroleum Storage Association (EBV), based in Wilhelmshaven. The cylindrical caverns are located at a depth of 1200 meters to 2000 meters. A cavern is around 300 to 500 meters high and up to 100 meters in diameter. In 2010 the cavern field had 35 caverns with a storage capacity of around 6.3 million cubic meters of crude oil. This makes the Rüstringen cavern facility, one of four NWKG cavern facilities, the largest of its kind in Germany.

In 2010, the Meppen Mining Authority approved an expansion of the facility by up to six additional caverns. After further salt core investigations, however, it turned out that the salt was not suitable for cavern construction at two planned locations. The cavern facility in the Rüstringen salt dome will therefore be fully occupied with 39 caverns in the planned final expansion.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Report Öko-Institut eV and DBE TECHNOLOGY GmbH: Oil storage in salt caverns of the Wilhelmshaven-Rüstringen cavern , page 114 , accessed on January 9, 2016
  2. ^ Deep Underground: Rüstringen project , accessed on January 9, 2016
  3. ↑ wzonline.de: Permission to build six more caverns , accessed on January 9, 2016
  4. ↑ Wilhelmshavener Zeitung of January 5, 2016: Protective houses built over the cavern heads, page 7

Coordinates: 53 ° 33 ′ 42.2 "  N , 8 ° 4 ′ 37.2"  E