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OIL&GAS FROM LOW PERMEABILITY PLAYS. Latest granted patents 2016-2018. Propping agents
Summary
Hydraulic fracturing is an oil or gas development process which typically consists of injecting pressurised water, sand and chemicals into geologic formations which are characterised by low permeability or have been damaged or clogged during drilling, such as tight sand, shale or coalbed methane formations. This technique is a means of well-stimulation and used to create new fractures in the rock or increase the size, reach, as well as connectivity of existing fractures. During the fracking process propping agents are used to keep the fracture open once the pumps are shut down and the fracture begins to close. The ideal propping agent is strong, resistant to crushing and corrosion, has a low density, and is available at low cost. The products that come closest to these desired traits are silica sand, resin-coated sand (RCS), and ceramic proppants. Research, however, has revealed that the makeup of a geologic formation has a marked influence on the effectiveness of the proppant. Some proppants can shatter under overload while other materials create fractures in a horizontal “pancake”-like fashion, which also diminishes production efficiency. In other cases, the propping material simply embeds in the rock. The patents presented in this bulletin try to overcome some of the aforementioned issues.
A selection of patents related to hydraulic fracturing materials and propping agents and published by patent offices around the globe in 2016-2018 is provided for review in the present bulletin. General research methodology can be found at on the Advanced Energy Technologies website. The present bulletin includes 525 patents, prepared by applicants from 17 countries and registered in 15 patent offices. The patent documents mention 235 applicants and 463 IPC subgroups.
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), CNIPA (CN), CIPO (CA), IP Australia (AU), Rospatent (RU), IMPI (MX), EPO, EAPO, JPO (JP), INPI (BR).
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 patents 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), Carbo Ceramics, Inc. (US), Oren Technologies, LLC (US), BASF, SE (DE), Rosneft (RU), Saudi Arabian Oil Company (SA), Self-Suspending Proppant LLC (US), 3M Innovative Properties Company (US), ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company (US).
The top prominent documents section includes three lists of the top 10 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 hydraulic fracturing materials and propping agents.
