Artificial Intelligence Aided Geologic Facies Classification in Complex Carbonate Reservoirs

Facies classification for complex reservoirs is an important step in characterizing reservoir heterogeneity and determining reservoir properties and fluid flow patterns. Predicting rock facies automatically and reliably from well log and associated reservoir measurements is therefore essential to obtain accurate reservoir characterization for field development in a timely manner. In this study, we present an artificial intelligence (AI) aided rock facies classification framework for complex reservoirs based on well log measurements. We generalize the AI-aided classification workflow into five major steps including data collection, preprocessing, feature engineering, model learning cycle, and model prediction. In particular, we automate the process of facies classification focusing on the use of a deep learning technique, convolutional neural network, which has shown outstanding performance in many scientific applications involving pattern recognition and classification. For performance analysis, we also compare the developed model with a support vector machine approach. We examine the AI-aided workflow on a large open dataset acquired from a real complex reservoir in Alberta. The dataset contains a collection of well-log measurements over a couple of thousands of wells. The experimental results demonstrate the high efficiency and scalability of the developed framework for automatic facies classification with reasonable accuracy. This is particularly useful when quick facies prediction is necessary to support real-time decision making. The AI-aided framework is easily implementable and expandable to other reservoir applications.