EOR Carbon Capture Patents: Top Companies & Filing Trends 2026
- Filing has cooled since its 2024 peak. 20 families filed in 2024 against 9 in 2017, but the run rate through 2026 is thin — publication lag makes the very latest year look softer than it will end up.
- E21B drilling claims dominate the IPC mix. 184 of 191 records sit in E21B, with C09K materials claims a distant second at 65 — most of the remaining subclasses are add-on instrumentation or data layers, not core recovery chemistry.
- Momentum has gone quiet at the top. Several of the most active historical filers show zero filings in the latest year, including two with a -100% and -80% year-over-year drop — the field is between waves, not accelerating.
Filing growth compares 2021 (14 records) with 2024 (20) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 191 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the filing record shows
Enhanced oil recovery paired with carbon capture and storage sits at the intersection of two older disciplines: tertiary recovery engineering and gas separation chemistry. The 191 patent families captured here span 2015 through mid-2026, concentrated overwhelmingly in well and reservoir engineering claims (IPC class E21B) rather than in the capture or separation hardware itself. That composition matters for strategy: most of the claim space contested in this dataset is about how CO2 is injected and managed downhole, not how it is captured upstream.
Filing volume rose unevenly to a peak in 2024 before cooling. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the 2025-2026 figures in this dataset understate real filing activity and should not be read as a decline on their own.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 191-family dataset: when the claims were filed, and which IPC subclasses they fall under.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filings rose from 9 in 2017 to a peak of 20 in 2024, passing through 8 at the 2022 midpoint. The trajectory since the peak is flat to declining, though the final one to two years are undercounted by publication lag.
IPC subclass distribution
E21B (earth and rock drilling / wells) accounts for 184 of 191 records, making it the near-universal core classification. C09K (functional materials, 65) and a cluster of B65G, G06F, C01B, B01D, G06Q and F25J subclasses in single digits to teens describe the supporting chemistry, monitoring software and gas-separation hardware layered on top of the core recovery claims.
Shares are the percentage of the 191 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Enhanced Oil Recovery Carbon Capture and Storage with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about enhanced oil recovery carbon capture and storage and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records and a representative filing
Systems and methods for generating in-situ carbon dioxide driver gas for use in enhanced oil recovery
The apparatus generates carbon dioxide gas on-site at the oil field for use in EOR: a steam generator produces superheated steam and pairs it with a source of essentially pure oxygen; a steam reformer reacts a carbonaceous material with the steam and oxygen, in the absence of air, to produce a driver gas of primarily carbon dioxide and hydrogen; a separator then isolates a carbon dioxide-rich stream from the rest of the driver gas.Filed by Pioneer Energy, Inc., 2014-09-25.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20110088896A1 | Integrated enhanced oil recovery process | 144 |
| 2 | US7753972B2 | Portable apparatus for extracting low carbon petroleum and for generating low carbon electricity | 113 |
| 3 | US20100300682A1 | Computer-implemented systems and methods for screening and predicting the performance of enhanced oil recover… | 97 |
| 4 | US20160009981A1 | Enhanced oil recovery process to inject low-salinity water alternating surfactant-gas in oil-wet carbonate re… | 62 |
| 5 | US20100038082A1 | Portable renewable energy system for enhanced oil recovery (preseor) using biomass having net negative co2 em… | 56 |
| 6 | US20150233222A1 | Enhanced oil recovery process to inject low salinity water and gas in carbonate reservoirs | 50 |
| 7 | US20170044425A1 | Stability improvement of co2 foam for enhanced oil recovery applications using polyelectrolytes and polyelect… | 33 |
| 8 | US8479834B2 | Integrated enhanced oil recovery process | 33 |
| 9 | US20210165126A1 | Method for improved recovery in ultra-tight reservoirs based on diffusion | 32 |
| 10 | US20160289539A1 | Oil recovery processes at high salinity carbonate reservoirs | 31 |
Citation counts accumulate over time and favour older filings; treat them as a signal of influence within this corpus, not of which claims are most valuable today.
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Browse MCP servers →Reading the composition
Four patterns stand out once record counts and IPC codes are set against each other.
The contest is downhole, not at the capture unit
Almost every record in this dataset touches E21B well and reservoir claims. Capture-specific separation hardware (B01D, F25J) appears in only a small fraction of filings, suggesting most applicants are claiming injection and reservoir management around CO2, not the capture process that produces it.
A functional-materials layer sits under the drilling claims
C09K covers surfactants, gels and other injection-fluid materials. At 65 records it is the clear second subclass, pointing to fluid-chemistry formulation as the most active adjacent claim area to core well engineering.
Screening and simulation software is a thin but present layer
G06F (digital data processing) and G06Q (business/admin processing) together account for 28 records — modest but non-trivial, reflecting a move toward computer-implemented screening and performance-prediction claims rather than purely mechanical ones.
Filing is heavily US and Canada weighted
United States (101) and Canada (34) together dominate receiving-office counts, with WIPO PCT, Australia, Europe and China trailing well behind — consistent with North American shale and heavy-oil EOR activity driving most of the claim volume.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to enhanced oil recovery carbon capture and storage, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| ConocoPhillips Company | University of Kansas | 5 |
| ConocoPhillips Company | Halliburton Company | 2 |
| Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco) | Saudi Aramco Services Company | 1 |
Only three co-assignee pairs appear across the dataset, the strongest linking an operator with a university research partner — collaboration is the exception, not the norm, in this field's filing behaviour.
Assignees and recent momentum
Filing activity is spread across operators, service companies and a small number of university partners, but recent-year momentum has gone quiet across the most active historical names.
Several top filers show zero activity in the latest year
Assignees with substantial filing histories in this dataset — including operators and energy companies — report no filings in the most recent year, with year-over-year drops as steep as -100% and -80% among the names tracked for momentum.
Operator-university pairings are the main collaboration signal
The strongest co-assignee link in the dataset pairs an operator with a university research group; a second pairing links the same operator with a services partner. Cross-company joint filing is otherwise absent.
Filing strategy is North America-first
With United States and Canada together accounting for the large majority of receiving-office filings, applicants in this space are prioritising North American protection well ahead of European or Chinese filing.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Chum Industries | 1 | -80% |
| Equinor Energy AS | 0 | — |
| Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco) | 0 | -100% |
| GreatPoint Energy, Inc. | 0 | — |
| ConocoPhillips Company | 0 | — |
| University of Kansas | 0 | — |
| ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company | 0 | — |
| King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals | 0 | -100% |
Where to take this
The dataset points to a field with occupied core claims and thinner coverage in adjacent process and software layers.
Map freedom-to-operate against E21B claims
Before committing engineering resources to a downhole injection design, check it against the dense E21B claim base rather than assuming the capture-side chemistry is the binding constraint.
Explore in Eureka →Track the quiet filers
Assignees with a recent drop to zero filings may be re-tooling rather than exiting — monitor their broader patent activity outside this exact search string for early signals of a next wave.
Explore in Eureka →Test claims in the thin subclasses
B01D, F25J and G06Q each carry single-digit-to-teens record counts against a 191-family base — a first mover with a well-drafted claim in these areas faces less prior art than one filing in E21B.
Explore in Eureka →Common questions about this landscape
CO2-EOR (carbon dioxide enhanced oil recovery) injects carbon dioxide into a reservoir to increase oil recovery while storing a portion of the CO2 underground. Patent filings in this space typically claim either the injection and reservoir-management method (classified under E21B) or the fluid and gas chemistry used in the process (C09K, B01D, F25J). This dataset shows the injection and well-engineering side is far more heavily claimed than the capture or separation hardware side, so CCS-specific capture claims remain comparatively open.
Filing activity in this dataset comes from a mix of major operators, oilfield services companies and university research groups, with a small number of co-assignee pairings linking operators to academic partners. Several of the historically most active filers show no filings in the latest tracked year, which suggests the field is between filing waves rather than under continuous acceleration from any single leader. Ranking detail by assignee is provided in the accompanying table rather than summarised here.
Filings rose from single digits in 2017 to a peak of 20 in 2024, but the trend since the peak is flat to declining based on the records published so far. Because patent publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 figures in any such dataset are undercounted and should not yet be read as a real slowdown. A clearer read on the most recent two years will only be possible once those cohorts fully publish.
US20140284066A1, assigned to Pioneer Energy, Inc., claims an in-situ apparatus for generating carbon dioxide driver gas at the oil site itself, using a steam generator, a steam reformer reacting carbonaceous material with steam and pure oxygen, and a separator to isolate the CO2-rich stream. It matters because it claims on-site CO2 generation for EOR rather than assuming external CO2 supply, which is a meaningfully different commercial model from pipeline-sourced CO2-EOR. Anyone designing an on-site or portable CO2 generation unit for EOR should review its claim scope closely.
The IPC composition of this dataset shows claim density concentrated in E21B (well and reservoir engineering) with much thinner coverage in gas separation (B01D, F25J), computer-implemented screening (G06F, G06Q), and specific formulation niches like carbonate-reservoir surfactant-gas EOR. These thinner subclasses are candidates for first-mover claims with less prior art to design around. That said, thin coverage in a search string reflects claim scope choices in this specific dataset, not an absence of activity in the broader technical field.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.