Executive Summary
Conversion Gas Imports innovated a salt cavern based alternative to tank based LNG receiving terminals, called the Bishop Process terminal.
The Bishop Process LNG terminal is faster to construct, less expensive to build and operate, significantly more secure, and has far greater storage and delivery capacities than conventional tank based LNG receiving facilities.
The Bishop Process LNG Terminal:
- receives the LNG cargo from the ship
- pumps it to cavern injection pressures
- warms the LNG to salt compatible temperatures using any type of high pressure and high capacity heat exchanger, and
- directly injects the dense phase natural gas into salt caverns for storage
The LNG ship can be unloaded in the same time as at a tank based terminal. Salt cavern storage of natural gas allows for large scale storage (10 ship loads or more) that decouples ship arrivals from gas deliveries providing flexibility in both shipping and gas marketing not found at smaller capacity tank based terminals.
The Infrastructure Is Ready
Well known offshore techniques and the significant pipeline infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico are directly applicable to this technology and has been extensively defined in the DOE research. This process can be used in any location that has salt formations suitable for cavern development, including Europe and Asia in addition to North America.
A salt cavern based LNG receiving terminal provides the economies of scale, the security of underground storage, and the simplicity of cavern operations to the LNG industry.