UNCONVENTIONAL OIL. Latest granted patents 2016-2018. Gas injection or water flooding
Summary
Methods of injecting gas or water into an oil-bearing formation are well-tested and industrially-mastered technologies used in, inter alia, unconventional oil production. Water flooding is usually considered a secondary recovery method and is used to raise pressure in the play. Carbon dioxide, associated petroleum gas or nitrogen is usually chosen to inject into the formation, and this technology is considered as a tertiary recovery method. There are multiple variants for the implementation of each of these technologies or their combinations. For instance, it can be the simultaneous delivery of water and CO2, mixing CO2 with oil to reduce its viscosity, hot water injection, etc. A number of researchers consider CO2 injection to be one of the most promising methods of EOR (Enhanced Oil Recovery), inasmuch as it helps solve the problems related to climate change issues by sequestering this greenhouse gas. The present patent statistical bulletin includes a collection of recent patents in this field and provides general statistical figures of patenting.
The present bulletin reviews patents granted by patent offices around the globe in 2016-2018 in the field related to gas injection or water flooding in unconventional oil. General research methodology can be found on the Advanced Energy Technologies website. 677 patent documents from 19 patent offices around the world are represented in the bulletin. In total, 194 applicants from 19 countries and 608 subgroups of the International Patent Classification are mentioned.
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 patents were USPTO (US), CNIPA (CN) and CIPO (CA).
From the analysis of texts of patent documents 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.
Data is provided for each of the top 10 applicants, leading in terms of the number of published patent documents among the ones examined in the bulletin, illustrating their share in the established intellectual property market, distribution of documents by problems, IPC sections, patent offices and technology indicators. Representatives of the USA prevail among the patenting leaders in the examined period of time. These leaders include: ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company (US), ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company (US), General Electric (US), Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. (US), Saudi Arabian Oil Company (SA), Baker Hughes Incorporated (US), Eisenberger Peter (US), Shell Internationale Research Maatschappij B.V. (NL), Chichilnisky Graciela (US), Dow Global Technologies, LLC (US).
The prominent documents pages contain the top 10 patents with the highest bibliographical rating, the most extensive coverage of IPC sections, and the shortest patent pending time.
The patent bulletin also includes a list of all of the documents reviewed, arranged by patent offices and indicated by the ID numbers of the granted patents.
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. A 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 gas injection or water flooding methods in unconventional oil production technologies.
