EOR Corrosion Resistance Patents: Leaders & White Space 2026
- Filing has cooled, not grown. Activity peaked at 9 families in 2018 and had fallen to roughly 1 by 2022, with the most recent partial year showing no new filings from the assignees tracked here.
- Two IPC subclasses carry the bulk of the claim space. C23F (corrosion & metal removal) and C09K (materials for miscellaneous applications, including inhibitor formulations) appear in nearly two-thirds of the 41 families, while drilling-fluid and alloy chemistry classes trail well behind.
- No assignee shows current-year momentum. Every tracked assignee — from state oil majors to specialty chemical suppliers — logged zero filings in the latest year, consistent with a mature, consolidation-phase filing pattern rather than an active filing race.
Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 41 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks patent families at the intersection of enhanced oil recovery and corrosion control: filings that combine EOR or tertiary-recovery process language with CO2 corrosion, H2S corrosion, corrosion-inhibitor or corrosion-resistant-alloy claims, classified under C23F11, C09K8/54 or E21B41/02. The scope is narrow by design — it isolates the corrosion-management layer of EOR operations rather than EOR process technology generally.
Coverage runs from 2015-01-01 through the 2026-07-31 cut-off, spanning 41 published patent families. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the last one to two years in any trend line will look sparser than the underlying filing activity actually was.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 41 families: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
A 2018 peak followed by a flat tail
Filings rose from 4 in 2017 to a peak of 9 in 2018, then declined toward a midpoint of 1 in 2022. The pattern reads as a burst of activity around a specific technical push in 2017–2018 followed by a long cooling period, rather than a steadily growing field.
Corrosion chemistry dominates over hardware
C23F (corrosion & metal removal) and C09K (materials for miscellaneous applications) each cover roughly two-thirds of the corpus, well ahead of E21B (drilling/well hardware) and the organo-metallic and polymer classes. Claim activity concentrates on inhibitor chemistry and formulation rather than on alloy or mechanical solutions to corrosion.
Shares are the percentage of the 41 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 Corrosion Resistance with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about enhanced oil recovery corrosion resistance and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited records in this corpus
WO2008084503A1 — Noncarcinogenic corrosion inhibition for oil and gas well completion & packer fluids
A non-carcinogenic formulation to mitigate corrosion of tubing and casing exposed to high-density sodium chloride and calcium chloride brines used as well completion and packer fluids for EOR wells operating under gas lift with CO2-rich produced gas. The formulation blends an anodic corrosion inhibitor, a cathodic corrosion inhibitor and a metal-complexing ligand.Filed by Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited, 2008-07-17.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5049311A | Alkoxylated alkyl substituted phenol sulfonates compounds and compositions, the preparation thereof and their… | 61 |
| 2 | EP0082657A2 | Polyampholytes and their use | 37 |
| 3 | US5020595A | Carbon dioxide-steam co-injection tertiary oil recovery process | 17 |
| 4 | WO2008084503A1 | Noncarcinogenic corrosion inhibition for oil and gas well completion & packer fluids | 12 |
| 5 | US20170320817A1 | Hydroxysultaine- and sulfobetaine-based geminal zwitterionic liquids, method for obtaining same, and use ther… | 8 |
| 6 | CN102040992A | 二氧化碳吞吐强化采油用的防杆卡液及其加注方法 | 7 |
| 7 | EP0082657A3 | Polyampholytes and their uses | 5 |
| 8 | EP0082657B1 | Polyampholytes and their use | 4 |
| 9 | EP0082657B2 | Polyampholytes and their use | 4 |
| 10 | WO2019092367A1 | Secondary alcohol phosphate ester | 3 |
Citation counts are drawn from within the searched corpus and skew toward older filings; treat them as a signal of influence on later filers, not of current commercial relevance.
Patent titles are shown in the language they were filed in, not translated, so that each record stays verifiable against the original filing — a translated title will not match in Eureka or in any national register. Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers say about the field
Three patterns stand out once the filings are grouped by year, geography and IPC class.
A field that already had its filing wave
The peak of 9 filings in 2018, against a midpoint of 1 in 2022, points to a technology push that has largely run its course. New entrants filing here now are working against an established inhibitor-chemistry baseline rather than opening a growing market.
Chemistry claims outweigh hardware claims
Corrosion-inhibitor and materials-formulation classes each touch roughly two-thirds of the corpus, while well-hardware class E21B appears in only about a third. Design-around work is more likely to run into a chemistry claim than a mechanical one.
No single jurisdiction dominates filing
Europe, China and the United States each account for a similar share of receiving-office filings, with India, Canada and WIPO/PCT close behind. Freedom-to-operate checks need to span at least these three regions rather than assuming a single home jurisdiction.
Collaboration is thin and state-anchored
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear across the corpus, and the strongest links all run through the same national oil major paired with its own research institutes and service subsidiaries. Cross-company joint filing is rare here.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to enhanced oil recovery corrosion resistance, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claim space
The assignee set spans national oil companies, specialty oilfield-chemical suppliers and individual inventors, but recent-year activity is flat across all of them.
National oil majors anchor the corpus
State oil and gas groups and their affiliated research and drilling-engineering institutes account for a meaningful share of the co-filing activity, reflecting corrosion management as an operational necessity for large-scale EOR programmes rather than a standalone product line.
Specialty chemical suppliers hold the inhibitor chemistry
Oilfield-chemical specialists appear consistently among the higher-filing assignees, concentrated in the C09K and C07F formulation classes. Their filings tend to claim specific inhibitor molecules and blends rather than process or hardware.
No assignee is currently accelerating
Every tracked assignee, from long-established chemical suppliers to national research institutes, shows zero filings in the most recent year. Combined with the 2018 peak, this points to a field in a filing lull rather than one with an active leader pulling ahead.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Arkema France | 0 | — |
| Instituto Mexicano del Petróleo | 0 | — |
| Calgon Corporation | 0 | — |
| China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) | 0 | — |
| Ecolab USA Inc. | 0 | — |
| Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) | 0 | — |
| Zhao Jinshu | 0 | — |
| Weatco Corporation | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The filing trend and IPC breakdown point to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, licensing or new filing.
Check the under-claimed branches before drafting
The gate chips above mark sub-areas with thinner filing density than the C23F/C09K core. A first claim there is more likely to clear prior art cleanly than one competing directly with inhibitor-chemistry incumbents.
Explore white space in EurekaMap freedom-to-operate across three jurisdictions
With EPO, China and US filings roughly balanced, a clearance search limited to one office will miss a meaningful share of the corpus. Run the check across all three before committing to a formulation.
Run a clearance search in EurekaWatch for a filing restart, not just current volume
The 2018 peak followed by a flat tail suggests filing could resume if a new corrosion challenge (deeper wells, higher CO2 partial pressure) emerges. Track new filings against this baseline rather than assuming the lull is permanent.
Set an alert in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
This landscape identifies 41 patent families published between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine enhanced oil recovery or tertiary-recovery claims with corrosion-inhibitor, CO2/H2S corrosion, or corrosion-resistant-alloy claims under IPC classes C23F11, C09K8/54 and E21B41/02. That is a narrow, corrosion-specific slice of the much larger EOR patent literature, not a count of all EOR filings. Because the search targets a specific combination of process and corrosion terms, the true figure for looser definitions of the topic would be higher.
Filing peaked at 9 families in 2018 and had fallen to around 1 by the 2022 midpoint, with no filings recorded from tracked assignees in the most recent year. That pattern indicates a field that has passed its filing peak rather than one still building momentum. Readers should remember that the most recent one to two years understate true activity because publication typically lags filing by about 18 months, so a modest rebound could already be in the pipeline without yet appearing in the data.
The assignee base mixes national oil and gas groups, their affiliated research and drilling-engineering institutes, and specialty oilfield-chemical suppliers, with co-filing activity concentrated among a small number of state-anchored pairings. No single assignee shows active filing momentum in the latest tracked year — every one of them, including the largest state oil groups and chemical suppliers, recorded zero filings most recently. That makes this a field with an established but currently inactive set of leaders rather than one company pulling ahead.
WO2008084503A1, filed by Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited in 2008, claims a non-carcinogenic corrosion-inhibition formulation for tubing, casing, well completion and packer fluids exposed to high-density sodium chloride and calcium chloride brines in gas-lift EOR wells producing CO2-rich gas. The formulation is a specific blend of an anodic corrosion inhibitor, a cathodic corrosion inhibitor and a metal-complexing ligand. It carries 12 citations within this corpus, making it one of the more influential filings for anyone working on brine-service inhibitor chemistry in gas-lift completions.
IPC composition shows heavy concentration in C23F (corrosion & metal removal) and C09K (materials formulations), with drilling-hardware class E21B and alloy-adjacent classes trailing well behind. Sub-areas such as zwitterionic wettability-modifying inhibitors, CO2-steam co-injection corrosion control, and corrosion-resistant alloys specifically claimed for combined CO2/H2S service show noticeably thinner filing density than the chemistry core. Those branches are worth checking first for a new filing, since a claim there is less likely to run into the dense inhibitor-chemistry prior art that dominates the rest of the corpus.
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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.