OIL&GAS FROM LOW PERMEABILITY PLAYS. Latest published applications 2017-2019. Directional Drilling
Summary
Directional drilling is usually described as the practice of controlling the direction of a wellbore to a predetermined underground target. It gives operators the possibility to reduce costs by using fewer wells to penetrate and produce reservoirs at their optimum locations. Directional drilling operations start out at the surface as a vertical well until the drill front is approximately 100 m above the target. At this point, a hydraulic motor is put between the drill pipe and the drill bit, whose function is to steer the drill bit. Improvements in drilling sensors and global positioning technology have helped make huge advancements, such as better control of the angle of a drill bit through real-time technologies, which can increase efficiency and decrease costs. Typically, there are three types of directional drilling applications: extended-reach drilling, horizontal drilling, and multiple laterals off a single main well bore. Using extended-reach drilling allows many wells to be completed from a single location and avoids the environmental impacts of multiple-surface structures. When hydrocarbon reserves are not thick but extend over a large lateral area, horizontal drilling is appropriate. Using the multiple laterals technique, on the other hand, can drastically reduce the number of wells required, which also creates less drilling waste. However, directional drilling involves several technical challenges concerning the well profile and the reduced gravity acting along the borehole. Furthermore, several directional-drilling-related environmental issues have come into the crosshairs of public discussion: water withdrawals on surface and groundwater supplies and on wetlands can, for example, negatively impact water quality and quantity for aquatic organisms. Accidental spills can contaminate soils. The applications included in this bulletin give an overview of the latest developments in this area.
General research methodology can be found on the Advanced Energy Technologies website. Abbreviations and glossary can be found on pages 5-8. The present bulletin includes and examines patent applications registered in patent offices around the globe in 2017-2019 in the field related to directional drilling.
A selection of patent applications related to directional drilling and published by patent offices around the globe in 2017-2019 is provided for review in the present bulletin. General research methodology can be found on the Advanced Energy Technologies website. The present bulletin includes 4091 patent applications, prepared by applicants from 27 countries and registered in 36 patent offices. The patent documents mention 555 applicants and 1182 IPC subgroups.
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), CNIPA (CN), INPI (BR), WIPO, EPO, CIPO (CA), IPO (GB), IP Australia (AU), NIPO (NO), IMPI (MX).
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 applications 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 applications by problems, IPC sections, patent offices and technology indicators. Representatives of the United States prevail among the patenting leaders in the examined period of time, including: Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. (US), Baker Hughes Incorporated (US), Landmark Graphics Corporation (US), Saudi Arabian Oil Company (SA), Schlumberger Technology Corporation (US), PetroChina Company Limited (CN), Schlumberger Technology B.V. (NL), Services Petroliers Schlumberger (FR), Metrol Tech Limited (GB), Chevron USA, Inc. (US).
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 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 and gas production technologies.
