Archive
UNCONVENTIONAL OIL. Latest published applications 2015-2017. Oil shale
Summary
Despite the fact that oil shale deposits occur in many countries around the world, the global kerogen oil production levels are relatively low and investment in the industry is falling worldwide. The biggest obstacles to an expansion of oil production from oil shale are costly methods of thermal activation (both above ground (ex-situ) and underground (in-situ) processing), which make kerogen oil less competitive in comparison to conventional crude oil. In addition, serious environmental impact, associated with extensive land use, air pollution and disposition of the wastewater prevent the widespread diffusion of oil shale processing technologies. However, oil shale will remain an important factor in the oil market in the future. Much research focuses on technological improvements aimed at optimizing the process of oil shale processing, both economically and in terms of its environmental impact. The present bulletin contains statistical data on patent activity in this area, revealing the most innovative companies and proposed technological improvements over the period under consideration.
The proposed bulletin is dedicated to oil shale and includes patent applications published in 2015-2017. Research methodology is available on the Advanced Energy Technologies website. The patent bulletin includes 1114 patent documents. The applications were registered in 34 patent offices around the world. 327 applicants from 32 countries participated in the development of the inventions. 934 subgroups of the International Patent Classification were encountered in the patent documents.
Key Highlights
The bulletin contains statistical data on the 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 top three patent offices that granted the largest number of registered the largest number of patent applications were USPTO (US), WIPO, CNIPA (CN) and INPI (BR).
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 patent documents includes Xyleco Inc. (US), Red Leaf Resources Inc (US), ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company (US), Saudi Arabian Oil Company (SA), Siemens AG (DE), Baker Hughes Incorporated (US), Chevron USA, Inc. (US), Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. (US), Shell Internationale Research Maatschappij B.V. (NL) and Ingrain, Inc. (US). Data representing the share in the established intellectual property market, distribution of applications by problems, IPC sections, patent offices and technology indicators is provided in the form of tables and diagrams for them.
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.
The conclusive part of the bulletin represents the lists 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.
.
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.
