[4] In the 18th century, during the rule of Maria Theresa of Naples and Sicily, the wilderness was cultivated, and Loenhout became an agricultural community specialising in livestock.

[7] The gas is stored in a fissured aquifer system in the top Dinantian karstic limestones (Visean age) of the Heibaart structure.

The Lower Carboniferous carbonates in the Campine-Brabant Basin are highly fractured,[8] a prerequisite condition to store gas or to recover deep geothermal energy.

The results of the exploration campaign were not successful, but it allowed to identify a promising trapping geological structure that could be used for gas storage.

The impermeable caprock is water and gastight and allows to confine high-calorie gas in the underlying fissured limestone aquifer.

In 2007, a second potential site for underground gas storage in the Campine-Brabant Basin was investigated by VITO, the Flemisch Institute for Technological Research, in Poederlee (municipality of Lille, Belgium).

There was two reasons for that: (1) the seismic survey showed that only 120 millions cubic meters of gas could be stored in the reservoir structure, and (2) GREG, the regulatory body of energy in Belgium, gave a negative advice to the government.