US Patent Issued to SCHLUMBERGER TECHNOLOGY on June 17 for "Methods, apparatus and systems for creating wellbore plugs for abandoned wells" (Massachusetts, Connecticut Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,331,614, issued on June 17, was assigned to SCHLUMBERGER TECHNOLOGY Corp. (Sugar Land, Texas).

"Methods, apparatus and systems for creating wellbore plugs for abandoned wells" was invented by Terizhandur S. Ramakrishnan (Boxborough, Mass.), Hua Zhang (Cambridge, Mass.), Quincy K. Elias (Hyde Park, Mass.) and Albert Perez (Brookfield, Conn.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A wellbore is plugged using a bismuth alloy. The wellbore is arranged so that a liquid bismuth alloy sets with an excess pressure of the plug relative to the borehole fluid pressure along a desired seal height distance."

The patent was filed on Aug. 21, 2023, under Appli...