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UNCONVENTIONAL OIL. Latest published applications 2017-2019. Oil Shale
Summary
Deposit of oil shales, which are kerogen-rich sediments, are widely distributed around the world and considered one of the most important and highly prospective sources of hydrocarbons. At present, falling oil prices and the emergence of more economically viable unconventional oil sources have pushed kerogen oil to the sidelines, and significantly halted the development of its production technologies. Moreover, potential environmental impact associated with oil shale processing – ex-situ and in-situ methods – is a further serious barrier for a large scale extraction of the resource. But given the fact that the global demand for hydrocarbons is growing and technically recoverable reserves of kerogen oil occur in many countries, this resource without a doubt will play an important role in the future. The technological scenario assumes a strategic approach to oil shale processing for developing more environmentally friendly and commercially attractive extraction options.
The present bulletin reviews patent applications registered by patent offices around the globe in 2017-2019 in the field related to oil shale. General research methodology can be found on the Advanced Energy Technologies website. 705 patent documents from 31 patent offices around the world are represented in the bulletin. In total, 241 applicants from 28 countries and 692 subgroups of the International Patent Classification are mentioned.
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 the USA.
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.
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: Xyleco Inc. (USA), ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company (USA), Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Arabia), ConocoPhilips Company (USA), Red Leaf Resources Inc (USA), Chevron USA, Inc. (USA), JLU Jilin University (China), Baker Hughes Incorporated (USA), China Petroleum & Chemical Company (China), and Ingrain, Inc. (USA).
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 unconventional oil production technologies.
