Using underground space to store natural gas resources is an important means by which to solve emergency peak shaving of natural gas. Rock salt gas storage is widely recognized due to its high-efficiency peak shaving and environmental protection. Damage and stress concentrations inside the cavern injection during withdrawal operations and throughout the storage facility life have always been among the most important safety issues. Therefore, accurate evaluation of the stability of rock salt gas storage during operation is of paramount significance to field management and safety control. In this study, we used the finite element numerical analysis software Flac3D to numerically simulate large displacement deformations of the cavern wall during gas storage—in addition to the distribution of the plastic zone of the rock around the cavern and the surface settlement—under different working conditions. We found that the maximum surface settlement value occurred near the upper part of the cavern. The surface settlement value increased as a function of creep time, but this increase leveled off, that is, a convergence trend was observed. The value was relatively small and, therefore, had little impact on the surface. The application of gas pressure inhibited the growth of the plastic zone, but on the whole, the plastic zone’s range increased proportionally to creep time. For the 20-year creep condition, the deformation value of the cavern’s surrounding rock was large. Combined with the distribution of the plastic zone, we believe that the cavern’s surrounding rock is unstable; thus, corresponding reinforcement measures must be taken.

In the future, there will be more and more abandoned oil-gas wells with the exploitation of onshore oilfield resources. However, the large height difference in abandoned oil-gas wells can be used as building blocks for gravity power generation, thus maximizing the economic value of abandoned oil-gas wells. In this study, a scheme of gravity power generation by virtue of the spud-in casing depth of oil-gas wells is proposed, and a gravity power generation model based on abandoned oil-gas wells is established. The parameters and economic benefits of gravity energy storage are calculated for oil-gas wells in the Huabei oilfield, the Daqing oilfield, and the Xinjiang oilfield. It is shown that the power density and discharge time of the gravity energy storage system in abandoned oil-gas wells are suitable for distributed power generation. In addition, the fast response characteristics of energy storage in abandoned oil-gas wells are verified, which makes the system suitable for correcting continuous and sudden frequency and voltage changes in the power grid but not suitable for energy arbitrage under a high number of annual cycles. Furthermore, the leveling cost of storage of the gravity system in abandoned oil-gas wells is more economical with the high number of annual cycles. The analysis of this work provides a significant investigation of the feasibility of gravity power generation by using abandoned oil-gas wells.

After more than ten years of research and engineering practice in salt cavern gas storage, the engineering technology of geology, drilling, leaching, completion, operation and monitoring system has been established. With the rapid growth of domestic consumption of natural gas, the requirement of underground gas storage is increasing. Because high-quality rock salt resources about 1000m depth are relatively scarce, the salt cavern gas storages will be built in deep rock salt. According to the current domestic conventional construction technical scheme, construction in deep salt formations will face many problems such as circulating pressure increasing, tubing blockage, deformation failure, higher completion risk and so on, caused by depth and the complex geological conditions. Considering these difficulties, the differences between current technical scheme and the construction scheme of twin well and big hole are analyzed, and the results show that the technical scheme of twin well and big hole have obvious advantages in reducing the circulating pressure loss, tubing blockage and failure risk, and they can be the alternative schemes to solve the technical difficulties of constructing salt cavern gas storages in the deep rock salt.

Geothermal energy extraction using existing wellbore systems provides a promising approach for sustainable heat utilization; however, the long-term thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) responses associated with different working fluids remain insufficiently understood. In this study, a three-dimensional coupled THM model was developed to compare geothermal heat extraction using water and pressurized CO₂ under identical geological and operational conditions. The model integrates Darcy flow, heat transfer, and linear elastic deformation to investigate the evolution of hydraulic, thermal, and mechanical fields over a 100-year operation period. The results show that the hydraulic fields rapidly reach quasi-steady states, whereas thermal responses continuously evolve due to cold-front propagation from the injection well. Compared with water, pressurized CO₂ exhibits stronger fluid mobility and produces a larger thermal influence region, resulting in different heat extraction characteristics under the same mass-flow-rate condition. Thermal cooling induces reservoir contraction and stress redistribution; however, the calculated stress and displacement variations remain within a stable range throughout the simulation period. The comparison demonstrates that pressurized CO₂ can enhance long-term thermal utilization while maintaining acceptable geomechanical stability under the investigated conditions. These findings provide insights into the selection of working fluids for wellbore-based geothermal systems and highlight the importance of coupled THM evaluation for long-term reservoir performance assessment.