Oil India gets its first ever patent from European Patent Office

OIL India has been granted patent by the European Patent Office for an invention titled ' A method for preventing wax deposition in oil wells with packers.'
Securing this first-ever patent grant signifies a major milestone for OIL and especially its Research& Development (R&D) Unit, which actively develops innovative solutions to oilfield exploration and production problems and has filed few other patent applications in recent years.
The patent grant amounts to recognition of the uniqueness of...
the solution provided by OIL to the problem of heavy wax deposition in flowing oil wells completed with packers. Scientists at OIL have studied the problem and attributed it to phenomenon related to severe wellbore cooling caused by evaporation and condensation of liquid in the annulus, also known as 'well bore refluxing'.
The solution described in the patent application consists of removing the liquid from the well annulus using a venturi/ ejector device. Such a solution is simple, involves one-time operation and does not interfere with well production.
Patent application for the invention was first filed in the Indian Patent Office in February 2014, based on which an international application was filed as per provisions of Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). Subsequently, national phase applications were filed in EPO,USA,Russiaand China. The EPO grant comes ahead of other offices.From the discovery of crude oil in the far east of India at Digboi, Assam in 1889 to its present status as a fully integrated upstream petroleum company, OIL has come far, crossing many milestones. In 1981, OIL became a wholly-owned Government of India enterprise. Today, OIL is a premier Indian national oil PSU engaged in the business of exploration, development and production of crude oil and natural gas, transportation of crude oil and production of LPG. OIL also provides various E&P related services and holds 26 percent equity in Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL). The authorized share capital of the Navaratna PSU is Rs. 2000 crores and at present, the Central Government holds 67.64 percent of the total capital of the PSU. OIL has over 1 lakh sq km of PEL/ML areas for its exploration and production activities, most of it in the Indian northeast, which accounts for its entire crude oil production and majority of gas production. Rajasthan is the other producing area of OIL, contributing 10 per cent of its total gas production.