Events & Courses

This meeting aims to create a dynamic convergence of expertise, fostering collaboration, innovation, and a holistic understanding of how salt tectonics impacts mining, energy, and related industries. By bringing together a diverse audience of academia and industry, we aim to collectively advance our knowledge and contribute to sustainable solutions for the challenges posed by salt tectonics in the modern world.

Event details

The fundamental properties and deformation associated with salt have traditionally played a key role in hydrocarbon exploration. It was the discovery of giant hydrocarbon accumulations associated with salt-related structures related that triggered interest in understanding how salt deforms in different geological settings and its impact on the surrounding sediments. 

Traditionally, the hydrocarbon exploration targets are located within the sediments either surrounding or above the salt and, therefore, most of the efforts have been oriented to the salt-related deformation and distribution of syn-deformational deposits. Meanwhile, the salt (solution) mining industry has had a specific interest on the internal deformation of salt-related structures, due to the economic significance and potential mining resources associated, while for the hydrocarbon industry the internal structures of salt have remained enigmatic at best, and a drilling hazard at worst. Through integrating understanding derived from these different sectors as well as physical and numerical modelling, seismic processing and interpretation, laboratory experiments, microstructural observations and field studies of natural salt diapirs major breakthroughs have occurred over the last 40 years. These include the flow laws of salt, and how large-scale cavities in salt structures (galleries or caverns) deform after completion and abandonment.

At present and within the frame of the race to reduce the environmental impact and decarbonize the society, salt basins can play a significant role to achieve the energy transition objectives in the coming years. Salt bearing basins offer a vast potential for development throughout the energy transition, therefore advances in characterization of composition, internal salt deformation and internal salt structures evolution will be key in the near future to understand the opportunities and challenges for energy transition technologies. These include temporary, cyclic storage sites for hydrogen, compressed air energy storage (CAES), redox flow batteries, the long-term storage of CO2, and waste, as well as enhanced geothermal energy potential in and around salt bodies. Studies indicate a likely demand for thousands of new hydrogen storage caverns alone inside salt bodies by 2050, which implies imply a great effort in investigation, design, construction, operation and decommissioning of these facilities, as well as fundamental science to understand and mitigate risks.