Archive
UNCONVENTIONAL OIL. Latest granted patents 2016-2018. Steam injection
Summary
Development of thermal methods to stimulate oil extracting is a logical consequence of the gradual depletion of traditional light oil reserves and the need to involve hard-to-recover and high-viscosity heavy oil in the production balance. Steam injection is a longstanding, industrially-developed technology that has proven to be effective, primarily in bituminous oil production in Canada. The most popular steam injection methods are SAGD (Steam Assisted gravity drainage), CSS (Cyclic Steam Stimulation) and Steam Flooding. However, significant price fluctuations in the global oil market, increasing environmental requirements and the development of other enhanced oil recovery methods stimulate the constant improvement in technology and the development of new engineering applications. This patent bulletin compiles recent patents related to steam injection and provides statistical analysis of the patent activity in this field over the period under consideration.
A selection of patents related to the subject of Steam Injection in unconventional oil reservoirs and published by patent offices around the globe in 2016-2018 is provided for review in the present bulletin. General research methodology can be found on the Advanced Energy Technologies website. The present bulletin includes 1212 patents, prepared by applicants from 26 countries and registered in 19 patent offices. The patent documents mention 404 applicants and 1061 IPC subgroups.
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), Rospatent (RU), IP Australia (AU).
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 vizualized, 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 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), ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company (US), PetroChina Company Limited (CN), Baker Hughes Incorporated (US), Tatneft (RU), General Electric (US), ConocoPhilips Company (US), Schlumberger Technology Corporation (US), Suncor Energy (CA), and Harris Corporation(US).
The bulletin contains lists of the top 10 prominent patents having the highest bibliographical rating, the most extensive coverage of IPC sections, 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 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. 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 unconventional oil production technologies.
