Archive
UNCONVENTIONAL OIL. Latest published applications. 2015-2017. Steam injection
Summary
Heavy and extra heavy oil, whose deposits are available in various parts of the world, are becoming increasingly important as a natural resource able to fulfil the growing global energy demand. One of the limiting factors that affect the full-scale exploitation and production of unconventional oil is its high viscosity. Steam injection is one of the enhanced oil recovery techniques applied to temporarily reduce oil viscosity, thus improving its mobility and enhancing the sweep efficiency of a reservoir. Although steam injection has proven to be an effective method, its application is associated with large energy use and high volumes of emitted greenhouse gases. The latest developments in this field are aimed at optimizing steam injection methods such as SAGD (Steam Assisted gravity drainage), CSS (Cyclic Steam Stimulation), Steam Flood, as well as hybrid steam injection techniques in order to develop enhanced oil recovery processes with lower emission intensities and less energy use. The latest patent applications presented in this paper, give an overview on the latest technical solutions in this field.
The proposed bulletin is dedicated to steam injection in unconventional oil and includes patent applications published in 2015-2017. Research methodology is available on the Advanced Energy Technologies website. The patent bulletin includes 2637 patent documents. The applications were registered in 35 patent offices around the world. 501 applicants from 30 countries participated in the development of the inventions. 1403 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), WIPO, EPO, INPI (BR).
From the analysis of texts of applications presented in this bulletin, detailed information is extracted for each of the unified indicators, which include: technical problems, types of inventive solutions employed, belonging of a patent document to one or other technological segment. The results of the statistical processing of this data for the entire array of the patent documents examined are summarized in the correspondingly-named diagrams and tables. In addition to that, a list of the top 10 groups of patent documents with identical unified indicators is provided, where the groups are sorted by the number of patent documents and include ID numbers and applicant names of the 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), Baker Hughes Incorporated (US), ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company (US), PetroChina Company Limited (CN), Schlumberger Technology Corporation (US), General Electric (US), ConocoPhilips Company (US), Dow Global Technologies, LLC (US), Schlumberger Technology B.V. (NL) and Schlumberger Canada Limited (CA).
The bulletin contains lists of the top 10 prominent patent applications having the highest bibliographical rating, the most extensive coverage of IPC sections, and those not being part a 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 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.
