OIL&GAS FROM LOW PERMEABILITY PLAYS. Latest granted patents 2016-2018. Environment & ecology
Summary
The problem of resolving a large number of environmental claims is critical for the development of shale technologies, in particular hydraulic fracturing. Among the most significant of these claims are: a high level of fresh water consumption; contamination of groundwater with hazardous chemicals; pollution of soil; surface water with insufficient effective utilization of the injected fluid. It is also impossible to deny the influence of hydraulic fracturing on the indication of seismicity, based on a number of serious statistical facts. Since most of the deposits are located far from the existing treatment facilities, and are often even in areas with minimal infrastructure, the construction of additional environmental technological complexes can lead to a critical decrease in the profitability of the project. The use of alternative fracturing options with water exchange, such as LPG, in addition to serious financial and technological difficulties, creates new environmental impact problems. The statistical bulletin proposed by the patent collects and analyses recent patents, which provide technical solutions to some of the problems noted.
A selection of patents related to environment and ecology issues of hydrocracking technology and published by patent offices around the globe in 2016-2018 is provided for review in the present bulletin. General research methodology can be found at Advanced Energy Technologies website. The present bulletin includes 1333 patents, prepared by applicants from 21 countries and registered in 18 patent offices. The patent documents mention 417 applicants and 1211 IPC subgroups.
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 IP Australia.
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 Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. (US), Dow Global Technologies, LLC (US), Rohm and Haas Company (USA), Baker Hughes Incorporated (US), Unilever N.V. (NL), ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company (US), Oren Technologies, LLC (US), Schlumberger Technology B.V. (NL), Ecolab (US), Sinopec China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (CN). Data representing the share in the established intellectual property market, distribution of patent by problems, IPC sections, patent offices is provided in the form of tables and diagrams for them.
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 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 granted patents.
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 the directional drilling and fracking technologies.
