Comment by nine_k
10 hours ago
> as well store the oil in those tanks
Salt does not burn, unlike oil. It would be sufficient to store dry salt, and prepare the brine during the pumping. Still a lot of hassle, of course.
10 hours ago
> as well store the oil in those tanks
Salt does not burn, unlike oil. It would be sufficient to store dry salt, and prepare the brine during the pumping. Still a lot of hassle, of course.
Please, literally every other country in the world store their petroleum reserve in surface tanks. We have fifty years of experience in designing the safety systems around oil tanks, and the only recent major incidents are from drone strikes in Russia and Saudi Arabia. Just because the US luck out in having the specific geological formation to store oil cheaply doesn't mean the alternative is untenable.
> It would be sufficient to store dry salt
Absolutely impractical. Storing and moving around solids in the megatons is very difficult compared to liquids that can be pumped. For comparison, the absolute largest solids moving operation in the world is a copper mine in Chile, it moves 300,000 metric tonne of mineral per day. The east-west pipeline in Saudi Arabia can move three times that in liquid, 1,000,000 metric tonne per day.
This method appears to be, in nearly every way, far better suited for purpose.