Archive
UNCONVENTIONAL OIL. Latest published applications 2015-2017. Underground reservoir exploration
Summary
In unconventional oil recovery thorough examination of underground reservoirs is of great importance as it largely determines the economic characteristics of field development. Revealing the parameters of oil and reservoir, such as viscosity, density, gas content, water saturation, porosity, permeability, and others, plays a fundamental role in the selection of the most efficient production technique. The geophysical methods of field exploration are very popular nowadays, particularly high precision results can be achieved by using 3D seismic data acquisition, which allows the extraction of data regarding the boundaries of subsurface layers and even regarding the gas concentration in formations. The proposed list of latest patent applications, specially collected for the case of exploration methods applicable to unconventional oil reservoirs, can be useful for a wide range of specialists in this field.
The present bulletin reviews patent applications registered by patent offices around the globe in 2015-2017 in the field related to unconventional oil. General research methodology can be found on the Advanced Energy Technologies website. 610 patent documents from 24 patent offices around the world are represented in the bulletin. In total, 161 applicants from 19 countries and 348 subgroups of the International Patent Classification are mentioned.
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), WIPO, CIPO (CA), EPO.
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 applications includes: Halliburton Energy Services, Inc (US), Schlumberger Technology Corporation (US), Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Arabia), Schlumberger Canada Limited (Canada), Schlumberger Technology B.V (Netherlands), Chevron USA, Inc (US), ConocoPhilips Company (US), Landmark Graphics Corporation (US), Schlumberger Services Petrol (France), Ingrain, Inc. (US). Data representing the share in the established intellectual property market, distribution of applications by problems, IPC sections, patent offices is provided in the form of tables and diagrams for them.
The top prominent documents section includes three lists of the top 10 patent applications having the highest bibliographical rating, the largest number 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 proposed patent statistics bulletin allows the existing trends in the intellectual property market of the specified industrial sector to be timely traced, as well as the possibility of acquiring a carefully selected list of patent documents fully corresponding to the specified subject. The bulletin can be useful for inventors, engineers, scientific workers, and business representatives, who are focused on the development of unconventional oil production technologies.
