Archive
OIL&GAS FROM LOW PERMEABILITY PLAYS. Latest published applications 2015-2017. Environment & ecology
Summary
Technologies of oil and gas extraction from low permeability reservoirs, in particular via hydraulic fracturing operations, are associated with serious environmental impact and risks to human health, wildlife and ecosystems. Fracturing is performed by direction drilling deep into the ground, using large quantities of water, sand and chemicals to crack the rock formation that contains gas and oil. Potential environmental impact resulting from this process includes ground water contamination, air and soil pollution, land cover change as well as seismic inducement. There are also concerns about the use of huge volumes of water for hydraulic fracturing, especially in water-scarce areas. In view of these issues, efforts are being made to develop effective measures for reducing the environmental damage from exploration and exploitation of shale and tight gas and oil deposits. Ongoing developments are aimed at reducing the number of used additives, at developing environmentally-compatible fracking fluids to replace highly toxic substances, as well as minimizing the use of water. The current available technical developments in this area are well reflected in patent applications presented in this bulletin.
The proposed bulletin is dedicated to environment and ecology in oil and gas production from low permeability plays and includes patent applications published in 2015-2017. Research methodology is available on the Advanced Energy Technologies website. The patent bulletin includes 2082 patent documents. The applications were registered in 33 patent offices around the world. 497 applicants from 23 countries participated in the development of the inventions. 1207 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 (patents, applications) 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), Dow Global Technologies, LLC (US), Rohm and Haas Company (US), Beijing Rechsand Science & Technology Group Co., Ltd (CN), Baker Hughes Incorporated (US), Oren Technologies, LLC (US), Schlumberger Technology B.V. (NL), Ecolab (US), Unilever N.V. (NL), and Evolution Well Services, LLC (US).
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 the 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 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 and oil production technologies.
