Caverns hollowed out in a Millard County salt dome will begin storing propane and butane next month, potentially opening new market opportunities for Utah’s natural gas industry, which has been hobbled by low commodity prices.
State regulators approved liquid-fuel storage operations at the Magnum Gas Storage Project. The project has been in the works for nearly six years while Magnum has used solution mining to carve out 2-million-barrel caverns in a two-mile-wide salt deposit, company general manager Sam Quigley told the Board of Oil, Gas and Mining.
Soon, Magnum hopes to begin filling the first of three caverns designed to hold natural gas liquids, or NGLs. The project, which state oil and gas regulators say is the first of its kind in Utah, is unfolding under state trust lands 10 miles north of Delta and hardly a mile south of the Intermountain Power Project, the massive coal-fired generating station that is expected to convert to natural gas. Salt Lake Tribune
