The walls of a salt cavern are strong and impervious to gas over the lifespan of the storage facility.
Once created, a salt cavern offers an underground natural gas storage vessel with very high deliverability.
Consequently, salt caverns cannot hold the large volumes of gas necessary to meet base load storage requirements.
Deliverability from salt caverns is, however, much higher than for either aquifers or depleted reservoirs.
This allows the gas stored in a salt cavern to be withdrawn and replenished more readily and quickly.
On the other hand salt caverns require the least amount of base gas.
After it is produced, North American propane is stored in huge salt caverns.
The massive salt caverns beneath the dome are ideal for the storage of petrochemical products.
Alton is the location of a natural gas storage facility currently under construction from salt caverns.
Gas more recently was stored in large underground reservoirs such as salt caverns.