Archive
OIL&GAS FROM LOW PERMEABILITY PLAYS. Latest published applications 2017-2019. Propping agents
Summary
Hydraulic fracturing is a term used for operations where a liquid is employed to fracture reservoir rock. The fracture is formed by pumping fracturing fluid into a wellbore. This fluid contains proppants – a granular substance (sand grains, aluminium pellets, etc.) that serves to keep the cracks open when it is withdrawn after fracture treatment. The materials most often used as proppants include silica sand, resin-coated sand (RCS), and ceramic proppants. Usually, sand is employed to prop open fractures in shallow formations. Sand is less expensive than RCS or ceramic proppants. RCS is stronger than sand and used where more compressive strength is required to minimize proppant crushing. Some resins can form a consolidated pack in the fracture, which will help to eliminate proppant flowback into the wellbore. Ceramic proppants may consist of sintered bauxite, intermediate-strength proppant (ISP), and lightweight proppant (LWP). The strength of ceramic proppants is proportional to its density. They are usually reserved for deep well stimulation where large values of in-situ stresses will exert great forces on the propping agent. Experimental work in the determination of fracture capacities has revealed a marked difference in the way in which different proppants respond to various cores. Some proppants shatter when subjected to overburden loads while other materials deform into small "pancakes". In other cases, the propping material simply embeds in the core face without shattering or deforming. The applications presented in this bulletin try to tackle some of the aforementioned issues and improve the use of proppants.
The proposed bulletin is dedicated to propping agents for hydraulic fracturing applications and includes patent applications published in 2017-2019. Research methodology is available on the Advanced Energy Technologies website. The patent bulletin includes 1197 patent documents. The applications were registered in 28 patent offices around the world. 286 applicants from 14 countries participated in the development of the inventions. 653 subgroups of the International Patent Classification were encountered in the patent documents.
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: CNIPA (CN), USPTO (US), WIPO, EPO, INPI (BR), CIPO (CA), IMPI (MX), IP Australia (AU), INPI (AR), Rospatent (RU).
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.
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 and technology indicators. Representatives of the United States prevail among the patenting leaders in the examined period of time, including: Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. (US), Carbo Ceramics, Inc. (US), Oren Technologies, LLC (US), Chongqing Changjiang River Moulding Material Group Co., Ltd (CN), Dow Global Technologies, LLC (US), Baker Hughes Incorporated (US), Beijing Rechsand Science & Technology Group Co., Ltd (CN), Wacker Chemie AG (DE), Chemours Company FC LLC (US), Saudi Arabian Oil Company (SA).
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 are provided in the conclusive part of the bulletin.
Who needs this bulletin?
The data provided in the proposed bulletin is a timely reflection of the transformations that take place in the intellectual property sector of the industrial direction concerned. A thoroughly edited selection of patent documents can become a good complement to your library of available technical solutions. The bulletin is targeted at inventors, engineers, researchers, managers and business administrators involved in the development of hydraulic fracturing technologies.
