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ASSOCIATED PETROLEUM GAS. Latest published applications 2015-2017. Associated Petroleum Gas
Summary
Associated petroleum gas (APG), also known as flare gas, is a hydrocarbon by-product dissolved in oil fluids and released during their extraction and preparation. Due to the fact that it is not allowed to simply release APG into the atmosphere, it needs to be further processed or utilized after its separation from the oil. For a long time, APG utilization methods were limited to reinjection into oil reservoir and flaring. The latter indicates a process of gas burning on a flare directly at the oil production field and is associated with negative environmental impact and a waste of a valuable raw material. In recent years oil producers have been exploring innovative technologies of associated gas utilization alternative to flaring, focusing on environmental impact reduction and economic benefits. Along with the already mentioned re-injection of APG into the reservoir, these include the use of associated gas as energy for on-site electricity generation, employing gas-to-liquids and gas-to-solids technologies, producing liquefied natural gas (LNG), conversion to petrochemical industry feedstock, etc. This bulletin presents new engineering solutions in this area in the form of patent applications for inventions.
The proposed bulletin is dedicated to Associated Petroleum Gas and includes patent applications published in 2015-2017. Research methodology is available on the Advanced Energy Technologies website. The patent bulletin includes 1187 patent documents. The applications were registered in 27 patent offices around the world. 353 applicants from 25 countries participated in the development of the inventions. 1008 subgroups of the International Patent Classification were encountered in the patent documents.
Key Highlights
Statistical information presented in the bulletin includes distribution of patent documents by years, by patent offices and by applicant countries, applicant-related data (residents and non-residents), and data on the most frequently mentioned International Patent Classification divisions (sections, classes, subclasses, groups, and subgroups). The largest number of applications during the period of time under revision was registered by the patent office of the USA.
For each of the patent documents selected for the examination in the present bulletin the characteristics of unified indicators were preliminary defined, they include: technical problems, types of inventive solutions employed, belonging to one or other technological segment. This allows the internal content for each of the indicators in the aggregate array of documents to be visualized, for instance, to define the sequence and proportional correlation of technical problems the inventive solutions disclosed in the texts aim to solve. A list of the top 10 groups consisting of patent documents with identical unified indicators contains ID numbers and applicant names of respective documents; the groups are sorted by the number of patent documents.
The following information can be found for the top 10 applicants: breakdown of documents by problems, IPC sections, patent offices, technological indicators, as well as the estimation of their share in the established intellectual property market. The 10 leading applicants by the number of patent documents were: General Electric (US), ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company (US), Dow Global Technologies, LLC (US), ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company (US), Haldor Topsoe A/S (DK), Siluria Technologies Inc (US), Shell Internationale Research Maatschappij B.V. (NL), Velocys Inc (US), Saudi Arabian Oil Company (SA), and Greyrock Energy Inc. (US).
The prominent documents pages contain the top 10 patent applications with the highest bibliographical rating, the most extensive coverage of IPC sections, and those not being a part of patent family.
A list 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 is provided in the conclusive part of the bulletin.
Who needs this bulletin?
The statistics bulletin under examination serves as one of the variants to monitor advanced technical achievements in the specified industrial sector. The statistical data, rating evaluations and carefully selected patent documents provided in the bulletin can be of interest for inventors, students and educators, engineers, as well as for businessmen and investors, who in one way or another are concerned with the problems of the development of unconventional gas production technologies.
