Archive
OIL&GAS FROM LOW PERMEABILITY PLAYS. Latest published applications 2017-2019. Environment and ecology
Summary
The potential impact on human health and the environment is a complex issue in unconventional oil and gas activities. One of the challenges in extracting oil and gas from low-permeability reservoirs, in particular via hydraulic fracturing technology, is the considerable use of fresh water and the subsequent generation of a waste by-product called produced water. Leaks and spills of drilling wastewater containing chemical fracking fluid mixtures can cause contamination of surface water and local drinking resources, pollution of air and soil, disturb natural habitats, ecosystems and biodiversity. In addition, environmental concerns surrounding drilling are associated with land surface disturbance, greenhouse gas output, and induced seismicity from the injection of wastewater into deep disposal wells. At present, numerous research and engineering projects have been focusing on better evaluation of the potential impacts of unconventional oil and gas development on the environment, developing new techniques to reduce the use of water, optimize produced water treatment, replacing toxic chemicals present in hydraulic fracturing fluids with more environmentally-friendly ones. The applications included in this bulletin give an overview of the latest developments in this area.
The present bulletin reviews patent applications registered by patent offices around the globe in 2017-2019 in the field related to environment and ecology in oil and gas production from low permeability plays. General research methodology can be found on the Advanced Energy Technologies website. 2078 patent documents from 33 patent offices around the world are represented in the bulletin. In total, 591 applicants from 21 countries and 1510 subgroups of the International Patent Classification are mentioned.
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 China.
From the analysis of texts of patent documents 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 applications 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 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), Ecolab (US), Fluid Energy Group Ltd (CA), Oren Technologies, LLC (US), Saudi Arabian Oil Company (SA), Evolution Well Services, LLC (US), Beijing Rechsand Science & Technology Group Co., Ltd (CN), PetroChina Company Limited (CN), SWPU Southwest Petroleum University (CN), Dow Global Technologies, LLC (US).
The bulletin contains lists of the top 10 prominent patent applications having the highest bibliographical rating, the most extensive coverage of IPC sections, and those not being part a 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.
