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OIL&GAS FROM LOW PERMEABILITY PLAYS. Latest published applications 2017-2019. Fracking equipment & methods
Summary
The beginnings of fracking date back to the 19th century, when an oil and gas worker placed gunpowder in a well and exploded it using hot iron, causing the rock to crack and increasing production. The modern process is similar, except that nowadays water, chemicals and sands are injected into a formation, for example shale, at high pressure to produce fractures. For fracking, a lot of equipment ensuring a continuous process is needed, including monitoring equipment, high-pressure and high-volume pumps, high-pressure hoses, as well metres and gauges. Also fracturing fluids tanks, proppant storage tanks, and units for adding chemical substances are a common sight on any fracking site. Fracturing fluids are one of the most important constituents of the process. They can consist of linear fluids, using different kinds of polymers; cross-linked fluids, such as borate crosslinked gel fracturing fluids; viscoelastic surfactant gel fluids, consisting of surfactants with inorganic salts to increase viscosity; acid-based or emulsion-based fluids, usually containing emulsions of oil and water. Lately, several environmentally-conscious trends have been observed in fracking, where, for example, the use of water is abandoned and gelled fluids with propane are employed. This leads to reduced amounts of fluid and enables pumping at slower rates. Also, recycled water as well as brine extracted from underground is becoming more popular. Moreover, some companies power their fracking equipment with natural gas instead of diesel. Despite these efforts, fracking is still associated with, first and foremost, environmental issues, including: contamination of aquifers, CO2 emissions, soil poisoning, gas explosions and excessive water use. Also, during operations problems with process efficiency can arise due to improper well construction or the properties of fluids used (e.g. proppants forming “pancakes”, proppant shattering). The applications presented in this bulletin try to find a solution to some of the aforementioned issues.
The proposed bulletin is dedicated to hydraulic fracturing equipment and methods and includes patent applications published in 2017-2019. Research methodology is available on the Advanced Energy Technologies website. The patent bulletin includes 3761 patent documents. The applications were registered in 29 patent offices around the world. 642 applicants from 19 countries participated in the development of the inventions. 1213 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 China.
Based on the analysis of each of the patent applications, internal characteristics of unified indicators (technical problems, types of inventive solutions, belonging to one or other technological segment) were found, which allowed specific features for each of the indicators for the entire array of documents to be defined, for instance, to define the leading problems or technical solution types that were disclosed by the inventors the most. Document lists are provided for the ten most popular groups of patent documents with identical unified indicators, including their ID numbers and applicant names.
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 applications by problems, IPC sections, patent offices. Representatives of China prevail among the patenting leaders in the examined period of time, including: Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. (US), Baker Hughes Incorporated (US), PetroChina Company Limited (CN), China Petroleum & Chemical Company (CN), SWPU Southwest Petroleum University (CN), Sinopec Research Institute of Petroleum Engineering (CN), Schlumberger Technology B.V. (NL), Saudi Arabian Oil Company (SA), China Petroleum University (CN), S.P.M. Flow Control, Inc. (US).
The prominent documents pages contain the top 10 patent applications with the highest bibliographical rating, the most extensive coverage of IPC sections, and those not being a part of patent family.
A list 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 is provided in the conclusive part of the bulletin.
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 directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies.
