In 2011, 6 major oil and service companies produce more than 1000 granted patents. The company with the highest number of invention is Schlumberger Technology Corporation with more than 400 granted patents (Figure 1). Major oil companies produce less granted patents. Furthermore oil company such as Chevron U.S.A. Inc. (San Ramon, CA) only receive less than 200 patent certificates.
Figure 1: Granted patents in 2011
The inventions are mostly in production and operation activities (Figure 2). Schlumberger contributes the most with 173 granted patents span from production management, measuring flowrate, cable, fluid filter, well treatments to ICD. Major oil companies only have 66 patents in the activity.
Figure 2: Research activities in 2011
Schlumberger as a logging company have been done research mostly on reservoir evaluation and engineering (188 granted patents). Forty five patents are in the Logging, formation and reservoir evaluation such as logging tool, induction resistivity tool, formation evaluation system and integrated reservoir optimization. Besides, people in SLB research center are also loaded with many novel ideas in drilling and completion activities such as steerable drilling system and completing a multiple zone well.
Baker hughes and Halliburton look similar to Schlumberger. Their research activities are mostly on drilling, completion, production and operation.
Contrary to service companies, major oil companies are busy on petrochemical research activities. More than 35% of the research that turn out to be granted patent are on petrochemical inventions such as lubricating oil compositions and low sulphur alkylate gasoline fuel. Shell got 60 granted patents on petrochemical inventions out of total 162 patents.
Filed under: Drilling & Completion, EOR, Production & Operation, Projects, Facilities & Construction, Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering Tagged: | baker hughes, bp, cable, chevron, fluid filter, fmc, gasoline fuel, halliburton, ICD, intellectual property, lubricating oil, measuring flowrate, paten, patent, petrochemical, production management, schlumberger, shell, varco, varel, well treatments
II’ve a question about your comparison. Which offices did you take into consideration when you talk about patents granted? American and European? Could you provide me the source of your data?
Thank you!
Fran
The data was retrieved from US patent office database (http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html). I only consider patents granted in US (American patents). I will evaluate the same based on WTO database or European PO database next year if I have any chance.
Rgds,