Meter skid, prover loop, and pipelines at Bryan mound.
Since 1976, the department of energy has been involved in a major facilities development program to stockpile crude oil. The strategic petroleum reserve facility program has five underground crude oil storage facilities in salt domes along the gulf coasts of Texas and Louisiana and a government- owned marine terminal on the Mississippi river at St. James, Louisiana. The five storage sites are bayou Choctaw, weeks island, west hackberry in Louisiana and Bryan mound and big hill in Texas. These five storage sites are organized into three distribution systems and connected by doe pipelines to commercial crude oil pipeline networks and marine terminal facilities for draw down /distribution. The Bryan mound strategic petroleum reserve site is located in Brazoria County, Texas, approximately 65 miles south of Houston. storage facilities will provide space for more than 220 million barrels of crude oil in a salt dome that contains 1.5 cubic miles of salt to the 10,500 foot depth level. a 36-inch diameter pipeline carries brine from the leaching process 12.5 miles out into the gulf of Mexico. Bryan mound draw down volumes could exceed one million barrels of crude oil per day.
Original public domain image from Flickr