Well Abandonment Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- 75.0% concentration. The top 5 of 39 ranked assignees hold 382 of 509 records in scope — this field is unusually concentrated at the top.
- Filings fell -83% from 2021 to 2024. From 48 records in 2021 to 8 in 2024, a decline the hero trend confirms; 2025-26 figures are still filling in due to publication lag.
- E21B dominates at 90.2%. Earth and rock drilling claims cover the overwhelming majority of records, while materials and control-system classes remain thin.
Filing growth compares 2021 (48 records) with 2024 (8) — 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 509 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the well abandonment and plugging patent record shows
Well abandonment and plugging covers the mechanical and material means of permanently isolating a wellbore: casing cutting, section milling, cement and bismuth alloy plug placement, annulus barrier verification and rigless abandonment methods. The 509 records in scope span 2015 through the 2026 cut-off and cluster heavily around single-trip tooling that combines a cutting operation with plug setting, and around barrier verification methods that confirm a plug meets regulatory integrity standards before a well is signed off. Patent families, not raw document counts, are the unit used for the assignee ranking here, which neutralises the effect of continuation filings and multi-jurisdiction duplicates.
Filing activity peaked in 2018 at 153 records and has fallen sharply since, though the most recent two years understate true activity because publication typically lags filing by roughly 18 months. Receiving-office data shows the United States and United Kingdom as the two largest jurisdictions by a narrow margin, with Europe, WIPO/PCT, Canada and Germany forming a second tier — consistent with a field driven by North Sea and Gulf of Mexico decommissioning obligations as much as by US shale activity.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 509-record dataset: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
A peak in 2018, then a sharp pullback
Filings ran from 74 records in 2017 up to a peak of 153 in 2018, then declined to 48 by 2021 and 8 by 2024 — an -83% drop over that three-year window. Treat 2025 and 2026 figures as incomplete rather than as evidence the field has gone quiet; publication lag alone accounts for much of the apparent fall in the last two years shown.
E21B carries the field; secondary classes are thin
E21B (earth and rock drilling for wells) appears on 90.2% of the 509 records, confirming that abandonment and plugging is filed and examined primarily as a drilling-and-completions discipline rather than a materials one. C09K (materials for misc. applications, 6.7%) and C06B (explosives and propellants, 2.4%) sit well behind it, and classes tied to sensing and control — H10B, H01L, G05B, H03H — each cover under 1.5% of records, which is notable given how central barrier verification and downhole monitoring are to the underlying engineering problem.
Shares are the percentage of the 509 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Well Abandonment and Plugging with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about well abandonment and plugging and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe documents anchoring this landscape
Single-trip casing cutting and bridge plug setting (US10151164B2)
A downhole tool combines a bridge plug releasably coupled to a casing cutting tool, allowing a section milling or perforating operation and plug setting to occur in a single downhole trip. The section milling operation removes an entire portion of casing within a region of the wellbore, and the bridge plug can be set before or after uncoupling from the section mill while still downhole.Assigned to Wellbore Integrity Solutions LLC, published 2018-12-11. Closely related to US20150275605A1, the most-cited record in this dataset and from the same technical family.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20150275605A1 | Single-trip casing cutting and bridge plug setting | 72 |
| 2 | US9702211B2 | Method and an apparatus for retrieving a tubing from a well | 70 |
| 3 | US20150226031A1 | Multi-stage flow device | 60 |
| 4 | US20190128092A1 | Through tubing p&a with bismuth alloys | 55 |
| 5 | US7090019B2 | Casing cutter | 48 |
| 6 | US20180148991A1 | Tool for metal plugging or sealing of casing | 47 |
| 7 | US20020060076A1 | Abandonment and retrieval apparatus and method | 47 |
| 8 | US20180216437A1 | Through tubing p&a with two-material plugs | 40 |
| 9 | US6629565B2 | Abandonment and retrieval apparatus and method | 39 |
| 10 | US20200173249A1 | Improvements In Or Relating To Well Abandonment | 35 |
Ranked by citation count within the searched corpus; older filings accumulate citations simply by being available longer, so treat this as a signal of influence rather than of current relevance.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing or freedom-to-operate decision
Concentration, timing and technology mix each carry a practical implication for anyone deciding where to file next or where to look for prior art.
Five assignees hold three-quarters of the field
With the top 5 of 39 ranked assignees accounting for 382 of 509 records, single-trip casing-cutting-and-plug tooling and its close variants sit on dense prior art held by a small number of oilfield-services incumbents. A new entrant filing a similar mechanical combination should expect to design around, not alongside, these holdings.
Activity has cooled from its 2018 peak
Filings dropped from 48 in 2021 to 8 in 2024, well down from the 2018 peak of 153. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, 2025 and 2026 counts are not yet reliable evidence of direction — the honest reading is a multi-year decline through 2024, not a current one.
Claims cluster in drilling mechanics, not materials or sensing
Materials-focused classes (C09K, C06B) and control/monitoring classes (H10B, H01L, G05B, H03H) each cover a small fraction of records despite barrier verification being a stated search term. That gap suggests verification and monitoring methods are still being claimed as adjuncts to mechanical patents rather than as their own art.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to well abandonment and plugging, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| Schlumberger Technology LLC | Schlumberger Limited | 16 |
| Schlumberger Technology LLC | Schlumberger Holdings Corporation | 14 |
| Schlumberger Limited | Schlumberger Holdings Corporation | 14 |
| Schlumberger Technology LLC | Schlumberger Canada Limited | 8 |
| Schlumberger Limited | Schlumberger Canada Limited | 8 |
| Schlumberger Technology LLC | Prad Research and Development Limited | 6 |
| Schlumberger Limited | Prad Research and Development Limited | 6 |
| Schlumberger Holdings Corporation | Prad Research and Development Limited | 6 |
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear in the dataset, and the strongest pairings link a single group's own subsidiaries to one another rather than connecting unrelated companies — evidence of internal corporate structuring more than cross-company collaboration.
Who is filing, and where the claim space is still open
The ranked leaders sit almost entirely in oilfield services; the long tail is where narrower, more defensible claims still get granted.
One filer holds well over a third of the field on its own
The top-ranked assignee's 195 records dwarf the rest of the ranking; fifth place sits at 20 and tenth at 11, so the drop-off after the leader is steep rather than gradual.
A compact second tier of oilfield-services specialists
Between fifth and tenth place, counts fall from 20 to 11 records — still meaningful filing programmes, but each is a fraction of the leader's output. This tier is where licensing or acquisition targets for a specific mechanical sub-claim are most likely to sit.
A long tail with room for narrow, defensible filings
Beyond the top 10, filers hold a combined 11.6% of records, each typically with a small, specific claim — a particular plug alloy, a verification sensor arrangement, a milling geometry. That pattern is where a new entrant with a genuinely narrow improvement still has room to file.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Ardyne Holdings Ltd | 0 | -100% |
| ConocoPhillips Company | 0 | — |
| ARDYNE TECH LTD | 0 | — |
| Schlumberger Technology LLC | 0 | — |
| Smith International, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Weatherford Technology Holdings LLC | 0 | — |
| Schlumberger Limited | 0 | — |
| ARCHER OILTOOLS | 0 | -100% |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a few concrete next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, licensing or new filing strategy.
Map claims against the top 5 in detail
With 75.0% of records held by five assignees, a freedom-to-operate review should start by pulling their full claim sets in casing cutting and bridge plug setting before drafting around any mechanical combination in this space.
Explore assignee claims in Eureka →Probe the verification and sensing gap
Barrier verification is a named search term but sensing and control classes cover under 1.5% of records each, suggesting an opening for narrowly claimed monitoring methods rather than mechanical tools.
Run a white-space search in Eureka →Track the post-2024 filing signal as it fills in
2025 and 2026 counts will keep rising as publication catches up; re-checking the trend in six to twelve months will show whether the -83% decline through 2024 continues or reverses.
Set a monitoring alert in Eureka →Common questions about well abandonment and plugging patents
The assignee ranking is led by a single oilfield-services company holding 195 of the 509 records in scope, with a steep drop to fifth place at 20 records and tenth place at 11. The top 5 assignees together hold 75.0% of all records, and the top 10 hold 88.4%, so the field is concentrated among a small group of established well-integrity specialists rather than spread evenly across many filers. Anyone assessing freedom-to-operate should treat the leader's portfolio as the primary reference point, not a representative sample of the whole field.
Filings peaked in 2018 at 153 records, then declined to 48 by 2021 and 8 by 2024 — an -83% fall over that three-year span using only complete filing years. Figures for 2025 and 2026 are still incomplete because publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, so they should not yet be read as continuing evidence of decline. Based on the data through 2024, the honest characterisation is a multi-year pullback from a 2018 peak, not a currently accelerating trend.
E21B, the earth and rock drilling subclass covering wells, appears on 90.2% of the 509 records in scope, making it by far the dominant technology category. Materials-related filings under C09K cover 6.7% and explosives/propellants under C06B cover 2.4%, while classes tied to control systems, semiconductor sensing and impedance networks each sit under 1.5%. This means the field is filed predominantly as mechanical and drilling engineering, with materials and electronic monitoring aspects claimed far less often relative to the total record count.
US10151164B2 claims a downhole tool that couples a bridge plug to a casing cutting tool so that a section milling or perforating operation and plug setting happen in a single downhole trip, including sequencing where the plug can be set before or after uncoupling from the section mill. It is assigned to Wellbore Integrity Solutions LLC and is closely related to US20150275605A1, the most-cited record in this dataset. A new tool that performs cutting and plug-setting in separate trips, or that uses a fundamentally different coupling mechanism, would sit outside its core claims, but any single-trip combination tool should be checked against it specifically.
Barrier verification and rigless abandonment are named in the underlying search terms, yet the IPC composition shows control, sensing and impedance-related classes each covering under 1.5% of the 509 records — far below the 90.2% carried by core drilling-mechanics claims. That gap suggests verification and monitoring methods are still largely claimed as features within mechanical patents rather than as standalone inventions. A narrowly drafted claim around sensor-based barrier confirmation or bismuth alloy plug formulation is more likely to clear examination than another single-trip cutting-and-plugging tool.
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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.
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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.