Archive
UNCONVENTIONAL OIL. Latest granted patents 2014-2016. Oil Sands
Summary
The technologies of bituminous oil production have successfully proven their competitiveness, particularly in Canada, where tremendous resources of this type of fossil fuel are located. Here, several technologies have been developed substantially to the same extent – mining with subsequent upgrading; In-situ based on Cyclic Steam Stimulation; and, of course, the most advanced method – Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage. However, the instability of the world oil market and considerable price fluctuations require the continuous perfection of production process management and engineering support in order to retain the positions achieved and ensure viable development of this oil production sector. The latest patents are the most informative source of engineering data concerning the state-of-the-art technologies and equipment, and other technical applications in the entire chain of synthetic oil production from bituminous feedstock.
The proposed bulletin is dedicated to oil sands and includes patents published in 2014-2016. Research methodology is available on the Advanced Energy Technologies website. The patent bulletin includes 1554 patent documents. The patents were granted in 31 patent offices around the world. 889 applicants from 31 countries participated in the development of the inventions. 1413 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: USPTO (US), CIPO (CA), CNIPA (CN), IP Australia (AU), Rospatent (RU), JPO (JP), EPO, EAPO, CIPC (ZA), KIPO (KR).
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.
A list of the top 10 applicants by the number of patents includes Shell Internationale Research Maatschappij B.V. (NL), Harris Corporation (US), ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company (US), Shell Oil Company (US), Suncor Energy (CA), Syncrude Canada Limited (CA), Xyleco Inc. (US), Siemens AG (DE), ConocoPhilips Company (US), Red Leaf Resources Inc (US). Data representing the share in the established intellectual property market, distribution of patents by problems, IPC sections, patent offices and technology indicators is provided in the form of tables and diagrams for them.
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.
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 granted patents 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 unconventional oil production technologies.
