Archive
OIL&GAS FROM LOW PERMEABILITY PLAYS. Latest granted patents 2014-2016. Exploration and site development
Summary
Exploration of hydrocarbons contained in low-permeability reservoirs is visibly different from traditional exploration methods for oil and gas which form natural underground reservoirs stretching over a larger area. In both cases the use of seismic or acoustic exploration methods and electric or magnetic tools, as well as exploration methods employing nuclear radiation or X-rays, especially in well logging geophysical surveys, geological drilling and analysis of the resulting samples, have been widely recognised. However, in order to get a convincing picture of the distribution as well as the number of unconventional hydrocarbons in a prospected reservoir, more detailed surveys are needed. The scattered and isolated nature of small deposits of hydrocarbons require an accurate evaluation of the brittleness of the rock and its fracturability, an analysis of its porosity and water content, as well as of the boundary locations of subsurface layers. Also, predicting fluid flow characteristics within fractured subsurface reservoirs and of borehole geometry, etc. has to be conducted. Furthermore, evaluation of tight (shale) oil and gas reservoirs is largely dependent on the effectiveness of production technologies consisting of modern drilling techniques and hydraulic fracturing, since this type of resource is generally considered not recoverable using traditional production methods. The development of such fields additionally requires the supply of fairly large amounts of equipment and materials, the availability of abundant water sources for fracking, and the organization of waste management activities. An important factor is also the considerably higher operational costs of the technology used for hydrocarbon production from low-permeability reservoirs, especially concerning directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing. The technical solutions presented in this bulletin give an overview of the most recent innovations in this area.
The present bulletin reviews patents granted by patent offices around the globe in 2014-2016 in the field related to exploration and site development for directional drilling and site development operations. General research methodology can be found on the Advanced Energy Technologies website. 370 patent documents from 19 patent offices around the world are represented in the bulletin. In total, 161 applicants from 16 countries and 205 subgroups of the International Patent Classification are mentioned.
Key Highlights
The bulletin contains statistical data on the 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 top three patent offices that granted the largest number of patents were USPTO (US), IP Australia (AU) and CIPO (CA).
From the analysis of texts of patents 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 patents 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.
Data is provided for each of the top 10 applicants, leading in terms of the number of published patent documents among the ones examined in the bulletin, illustrating their share in the established intellectual property market, distribution of patents by problems, IPC sections, patent offices. Representatives of the United States prevail among the patenting leaders in the examined period of time, including: Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. (US), Landmark Graphics Corporation (US), Schlumberger Technology Corporation (US), Schlumberger Technology B.V. (NL), ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company (US), Schlumberger Canada Limited (CA), Chevron USA, Inc. (US), Baker Hughes Incorporated (US), Hunt Energy Enterprises LLC (US), IFP (École Nationale Supérieure du Pétrole et des Moteurs) (FR).
The top prominent documents section includes three lists of the top patents having the highest bibliographical rating, the largest number of IPC sections, and the shortest patent pending time.
The patent bulletin also includes a list of all of the documents reviewed, arranged by patent offices and indicated by the ID numbers of the granted patents.
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 exploration and site development technologies for unconventional resources.
