API RP 1170

This Recommended Practice (RP) provides the functional recommendations for salt cavern facilities used for natural gas storage service and covers facility geomechanical assessments, cavern well design and drilling, risk management, solution mining techniques and operations, including monitoring and maintenance practices, site security and safety, procedures, training, and abandonment. It provides a comprehensive set of design guidelines, recognizing the nature of subsurface geological diversity, and stresses the need for in-depth, site specific geomechanical assessments with a goal of long-term facility integrity and safety.

This RP includes the cavern well system (wellhead, wellbore, and cavern) from the emergency shutdown (ESD) valve down to the cavern and facilities having significant impact to safety and integrity of the cavern system.

This RP does not apply to caverns used for the storage of liquid or liquefied petroleum products, brine production, or waste disposal; nor to caverns which are mechanically mined, or depleted hydrocarbon or aquifer underground gas storage systems.