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Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/matrix-acidising-and-acid-fracturing-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-07-31 · downloaded from the live page
Completion Tools & StimulationMatrix Acidising and Acid Fracturing Patents: Who Leads and Where the Field Is Still Open
- 59.2% concentration. The top five assignees alone account for 1,764 of the 2,978 records in scope — this is a field with a narrow set of incumbents, not a fragmented one.
- Filing is still climbing, not cooling. 2021 to 2024 filings rose 41 to 48, a +17% increase over the most recent three-year span that publication lag lets us read cleanly.
- C09K dominates the class mix. 73.1% of all records touch materials-for-misc.-applications claims, more than the drilling-and-wells class (E21B) at 49.7% — the chemistry, not the mechanics, is where claim density concentrates.
2,978
Published Records
59%
Top-5 Share of All Records
+17%
Filing Growth 2021→2024
US
Leading Jurisdiction
Filing growth compares 2021 (41 records) with 2024 (48) — 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 2,978 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
Published byPatsnap Research··6 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Field Overview
What the matrix acidising and acid fracturing patent record shows
Matrix acidising and acid fracturing sit at the intersection of well-stimulation mechanics and formation chemistry: treatments that dissolve near-wellbore damage or etch conductive channels into carbonate and sandstone reservoirs. The patent record captured here spans 2,978 published records filed between 2015 and the 2026 data cut-off, indexed against terms spanning wormhole propagation, acid diversion, spent-acid handling, chelating agents, acid retardation and etched fracture width. Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the most recent one or two years in any trend understate real filing activity.
The assignee ranking covers 100 companies and is heavily front-loaded: a handful of oilfield services majors and one national oil company hold most of the filing volume, while receiving-office data shows the United States, PCT/WIPO filings and Canada as the dominant jurisdictions ahead of Europe, Australia and the UK.
Filing activity and technology composition, 2015–2026
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on Matrix Acidising and Acid Fracturing covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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The Data
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 2,978-record corpus: the year-by-year filing count, and the IPC subclasses those records carry.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filings ran 117 in 2017 and peaked at 121 in 2018, holding roughly steady through the low-to-mid hundreds annually before the 2021-2024 window (41 to 48, +17%) that current data can read as complete. 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in under the publication-lag effect and should not be read as a decline.
IPC subclass composition
C09K (materials for misc. applications) covers 73.1% of the 2,978 records and E21B (earth and rock drilling for wells) covers 49.7% — the two anchor classes, well ahead of corrosion-and-metal-removal (C23F, 7.9%) and the smaller water-treatment, detergent and metal-extraction classes. Because records carry multiple IPC codes, these shares sum to more than 100% and should be read against the full record count, not against each other.
Shares are the percentage of the 2,978 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Matrix Acidising and Acid Fracturing covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
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Most-cited records and a representative recent filing
Representative Recent Filing
Method to measure acid diversion efficiency in matrix acidizing through NMR
KING FAHD UNIVERSITY OF PETROLEUM AND MINERALS
Filed by King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, this 2024 application describes flooding a rock core with a hydrochloric acid system to form a wormhole, then using NMR to measure porosity, pore-size distribution and diffusion tortuosity before and after treatment, from which a diversion index is established.The claims are diagnostic rather than compositional: they cover a measurement method for characterising acid diversion, not a specific acid system or additive chemistry.
Highest-cited records in the corpus
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6435277B1 | Compositions containing aqueous viscosifying surfactants and methods for applying such compositions in subter… | 421 |
| 2 | US6302209B1 | Surfactant compositions and uses therefor | 324 |
| 3 | US6306800B1 | Methods of fracturing subterranean formations | 314 |
| 4 | US20080093073A1 | Degradable Material Assisted Diversion | 302 |
| 5 | US6569814B1 | Fluids and techniques for hydrocarbon well completion | 275 |
| 6 | US20060113077A1 | Degradable material assisted diversion or isolation | 244 |
| 7 | US4695389A | Aqueous gelling and/or foaming agents for aqueous acids and methods of using the same | 221 |
| 8 | US20020023752A1 | Compositions containing aqueous viscosifying surfactants and methods for applying such compositions in subter… | 216 |
| 9 | US6399546B1 | Fluid system having controllable reversible viscosity | 208 |
| 10 | US6140277A | Fluids and techniques for hydrocarbon well completion | 202 |
Citation counts favour older records simply by virtue of longer exposure in a searched corpus — treat them as a signal of historical influence on surfactant and fracturing-fluid chemistry, not of current filing priorities.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Citation counts and representative records. Derived from a Patsnap search on Matrix Acidising and Acid Fracturing covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three read-throughs from the concentration, class and citation data above.
Concentration
59.2%
of 2,978 records held by top 5
Five assignees set the terms of the field
With 59.2% of all records held by the five leading assignees, most freedom-to-operate analysis in this space reduces to checking a short list of oilfield-services portfolios rather than scanning a fragmented landscape. The top ten push that to 83.8%, leaving a genuinely long tail below rank ten.
Top 10 = 83.8% of 2,978 records
Chemistry over mechanics
73.1%
of records touch C09K
Claim density sits in the fluid, not the hardware
C09K materials claims outnumber E21B drilling/wells claims (49.7%) across the corpus, meaning most contested claim space is about what is pumped downhole — retarders, chelating agents, diverting fluids — rather than the tools that deliver it.
E21B (wells) at 49.7% for comparison
Momentum
+17%
filings, 2021 to 2024
Filing is rising on the last clean data window
The 2021-2024 window shows 41 to 48 annual filings, a +17% rise, on the years publication lag has finished filling in. That is a growing field by the only reliable recent comparison available, not a maturing or slowing one.
Peak year to date: 2018 at 121 filings
Eureka AI Agent
Looking for what nobody has claimed yet?
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to matrix acidising and acid fracturing, with the prior art for and against each one.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on Matrix Acidising and Acid Fracturing covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Players
Who is filing, and where recent momentum sits
The ranked leaders are dominated by oilfield-services groups and their subsidiary filing entities, with one national oil company and a smaller specialty-chemicals player also present near the top.
Leader
613
records
A single leader well ahead of the field
The top-ranked assignee holds 613 records against 212 at fifth place and 115 at tenth — a steep drop-off that marks this as a leader-plus-cluster market rather than an evenly spread one.
Fifth place: 212 records
Recent momentum
-67% to -100%
YoY, latest year
Leading filers are pulling back in the latest year
Several of the most active historical filers, including major oilfield-services subsidiaries, show sharp year-on-year drops in the latest partial year — consistent with publication lag rather than a genuine slowdown, but worth revisiting once the lag clears.
Read against the 2021-2024 +17% growth window, not the partial latest year
Co-filing
176
strongest co-assignee pair
Filing is coordinated within corporate families
The ten identified co-assignee pairs are almost entirely internal — related entities within the same corporate group filing jointly — rather than cross-company collaboration, which tells a freedom-to-operate search to treat those groups as one filing bloc.
10 co-assignee pairs identified in total
Recent-year filing momentum by assignee
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Schlumberger Technology Corp | 1 | -67% |
| Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Schlumberger Technology B.V. | 0 | -100% |
| Schlumberger Canada Limited | 0 | -100% |
| Fluid Energy Group Ltd. | 0 | -100% |
| Baker Hughes Holdings LLC | 0 | — |
| Schlumberger Technology Corp | 0 | -100% |
| Schlumberger Holdings Limited | 0 | — |
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee-level momentum. Derived from a Patsnap search on Matrix Acidising and Acid Fracturing covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
What's Next
Where to take this next
The dataset points to a concentrated leader group, chemistry-heavy claim density, and diagnostic methods as one of the few visibly under-claimed branches.
Map freedom-to-operate against the top filing bloc
With 83.8% of records held by ten assignees and internal co-filing common within corporate families, a workable FTO check can start narrow and still cover most of the field.
Explore assignee portfolios in EurekaTest diagnostic and measurement claims for design-around room
NMR-based diversion measurement and similar characterisation methods sit outside the two dominant IPC classes and may offer more open claim space than compositional chemistry.
Run a white-space search in EurekaSource: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Matrix Acidising and Acid Fracturing covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
FAQ
Common questions on matrix acidising and acid fracturing patents
The patent record is heavily concentrated: the leading assignee holds 613 of the 2,978 records in scope, and the top five combined hold 59.2% of all records. This is dominated by large oilfield-services groups and their subsidiary filing entities, alongside a national oil company. The concentration is steep enough that a freedom-to-operate review can reasonably start with the ranked leaders before widening to the long tail below rank ten.
On the most recent window that can be treated as complete, filing is growing: 2021 filings numbered 41 and 2024 filings numbered 48, a +17% increase. Filing counts for 2025 and 2026 look lower only because publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, so those years are still filling in. The historical peak so far was 2018 at 121 filings, and the field has not returned to that level, but the recent trend is upward, not downward.
Most records carry claims in C09K, materials for miscellaneous applications, covering 73.1% of the 2,978 records — this is the acid systems, retarders, diverting agents and chelating chemistry itself. Just under half, 49.7%, also carry E21B claims covering the drilling and wells hardware and methods used to deliver treatment downhole. Smaller shares touch corrosion and metal-removal chemistry, metal extraction, water treatment and detergent-type compositions, reflecting the overlap between acid-treatment fluids and adjacent industrial chemistry.
The clearest under-claimed branches sit outside the two dominant IPC classes: NMR-based and other diagnostic methods for measuring acid diversion efficiency, chelating-agent retardation kinetics, spent-acid reuse and treatment, and corrosion-inhibitor pairing with hydrochloric acid systems. These branches show far lower filing density than the core compositional chemistry claims held by the leading assignees. A first claim in these areas would typically target a measurement or process-control method rather than a new acid formulation, which is where most existing claim density already sits.
The United States leads as a receiving office with 1,024 records, ahead of PCT/WIPO international filings at 382 and Canada at 347. Europe (EPO), Australia and the United Kingdom follow at smaller but still meaningful volumes. This distribution reflects where major shale, carbonate and heavy-oil stimulation activity and the associated services companies are headquartered or most active, rather than a uniform global filing pattern.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Matrix Acidising and Acid Fracturing covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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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.