US Patent Issued to SCHLUMBERGER TECHNOLOGY on May 27 for "Methods, apparatus and systems for creating bismuth alloy plugs for abandoned wells" (Massachusetts, California, Georgia Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,312,906, issued on May 27, was assigned to SCHLUMBERGER TECHNOLOGY Corp. (Sugar Land, Texas).

"Methods, apparatus and systems for creating bismuth alloy plugs for abandoned wells" was invented by Terizhandur S. Ramakrishnan (Boxborough, Mass.), Quincy K. Elias (Hyde Park, Mass.), Hua Zhang (Cambridge, Mass.), Youssef Magdy Abdou Mohamed Elkady (Stanford, Calif.) and Yixuan Feng (Duluth, Ga.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A wellbore is plugged using a bismuth alloy. In one embodiment, the bismuth alloy comprises an alloy of bismuth and tin. In another embodiment, the bismuth alloy comprises an alloy of bismuth and silver. The wellbore can...