UNCONVENTIONAL OIL. Latest published applications 2017-2019. Gas injection or water flooding
Summary
For improving oil recovery after natural depletion, the petroleum industry uses a wide range of enhanced oil recovery methods associated with the injection of fluids into the reservoir to support its pressure maintenance. The most economically viable and commonly used secondary oil recovery methods are water flooding and gas injection, which can recover up to 40% more of the original oil in place. In addition, there are also combined technologies, such as water-alternating-gas injection, low-salinity water flooding, cyclic gas injection, etc. The oil displacement ratio and sweep efficiency of the reservoir while using these techniques is determined by intrinsic factors like hydrocarbon properties and reservoir heterogeneities, as well as by external aspects like water or gas injection scenario, filtration mode, production equipment and monitoring systems. Many oil operators have been working to develop innovative methods for planning and implementing enhanced oil recovery regarding these factors making secondary mining projects more environmentally friendly at the same time. The latest technological innovations in this area are best highlighted in the patent applications presented in this statistical bulletin.
The proposed bulletin is dedicated to gas injection or water flooding technologies in unconventional oil and includes patent applications published in 2017-2019. Research methodology is available on the Advanced Energy Technologies website. The patent bulletin includes 1174 patent documents. The applications were registered in 25 patent offices around the world. 213 applicants from 14 countries participated in the development of the inventions. 907 subgroups of the International Patent Classification were encountered in the patent documents.
Key Highlights
The bulletin provides general statistical figures, including the overall distribution of patent documents by years, by patent offices and by applicant countries, applicant-related data (residents and non-residents), data on the most frequently mentioned International Patent Classification divisions (sections, classes, subclasses, groups, and subgroups). The most popular patent offices among the applicants were: USPTO (US), WIPO, CNIPA (CN), EPO, CIPO (CA), INPI (BR), IP Australia (AU).
From the analysis of texts of patent documents presented in this bulletin, detailed information is extracted for each of the unified indicators, which include: technical problems, types of inventive solutions employed, belonging of a patent document to one or other technological segment. The results of the statistical processing of this data for the entire array of the applications examined are summarized in the correspondingly-named diagrams and tables. In addition to that, a list of the top 10 groups of patent documents with identical unified indicators is provided, where the groups are sorted by the number of patent documents and include ID numbers and applicant names of the documents.
A list of the top 10 applicants by the number of patent applications includes Baker Hughes Incorporated (US), ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company (US), Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. (US), Saudi Arabian Oil Company (SA), PetroChina Company Limited (CN), Chevron USA, Inc. (US), Ecolab (US), China Petroleum & Chemical Company (CN), General Electric (US), and Total France SA (FR). Data representing the share in the established intellectual property market, distribution of documents by problems, IPC sections, patent offices and technology indicators is provided in the form of tables and diagrams for them.
The top prominent documents section includes three lists of the top 10 patent applications having the highest bibliographical rating, the largest number of IPC sections, and those not being a part of patent family.
The conclusive part of the bulletin represents the lists of all of the documents reviewed, arranged by the top 10 groups of patent documents with identical unified indicators and by patent offices with the indication of the ID numbers of the registered patent applications.
Who needs this bulletin?
The proposed patent statistics bulletin allows the existing trends in the intellectual property market of the specified industrial sector to be timely traced, as well as the possibility of acquiring a carefully selected list of patent documents fully corresponding to the specified subject. The bulletin can be useful for inventors, engineers, scientific workers, and business representatives, who are focused on the development of unconventional oil technologies.
