Archive
OIL&GAS FROM LOW PERMEABILITY PLAYS. Latest granted patents 2016-2018. Fracking equipment & methods
Summary
Hydraulic fracturing is a well development process commonly used in low-permeability rocks, such as shale, to increase oil or gas flow from rock formations. In recent years this technology has experienced several transformations, from single to multi-layer, from vertical to horizontal wells, evolving into production methods such as separate-layer fracturing and multi-stage fracturing. Fracking requires large amounts of equipment, such as high-pressure and high-volume fracking pumps, monitoring units, blenders for fracking fluids, storage tanks (for water, chemicals), as well as a chemical additives unit. Depending on reservoir properties, different fracking methods exist: for example, conventional fracking - high-pressure injection of a fracking fluid (primarily water and a proppant); fracking based on polymeric fluids, such as guar-based fluids; fracking using viscoelastic surfactant (VES)-based fluids; energized fracking (employing nitrogen or CO2); or fracking with breaker-free fluids, a depolymerized guar-based material. Despite the advantages of this production technology, there are several (environmental) problems associated with it. Some studies indicate that fracking-induced leaks might be responsible for a rise in global methane emissions. Furthermore, high water consumption, as well as wastewater treatment, as used water contains not only proppants and chemicals, but in many cases also heavy metals, have raised public concern. Finally, the construction of additional treatment facilities to comply with environmental standards is sometimes beyond the margins of project profitability. The patents presented in this bulletin are aimed at addressing some of the aforementioned issues.
The proposed bulletin is dedicated to hydraulic fracturing equipment and methods in unconventional oil production and includes patents published in 2016-2018. Research methodology is available on the Advanced Energy Technologies website. The patent bulletin includes 2607 patent documents. The patents were granted in 19 patent offices around the world. 683 applicants from 22 countries participated in the development of the inventions. 1036 subgroups of the International Patent Classification were encountered in the patent documents.
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), CNIPA (CN) and CIPO.
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.
The following information can be found for the top 10 applicants: breakdown of patent 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: Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. (US), Baker Hughes Incorporated (US), Weatherford Technology Holdings LLC (US), Schlumberger Technology B.V. (NL), Schlumberger Technology Corporation (US), PetroChina Company Limited (CN), Sinopec China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (CN), SWPU Southwest Petroleum University (CN), Tatneft (RU), ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company (US).
The prominent documents pages contain the top 10 patents with the highest bibliographical rating, the most extensive coverage of IPC sections, and the shortest patent pending time.
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 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 unconventional oil and gas production technologies.
