Neural network prediction of carbonate lithofacies from well logs, Big Bow and Sand Arroyo Creek fields, Southwest Kansas

In the Hugoton Embayment of southwestern Kansas, St. Louis Limestone reservoirs have relatively low recovery efficiencies, attributed to the heterogeneous nature of the oolitic deposits. This study establishes quantitative relationships between digital well logs and core description data, and applies these relationships in a probabilistic sense to predict lithofacies in 90 uncored wells across the Big Bow and Sand Arroyo Creek fields. In 10 wells, a single hidden-layer neural network based on digital well logs and core described lithofacies of the limestone depositional texture was used to train and establish a non-linear relationship between lithofacies assignments from detailed core descriptions and selected log curves. Neural network models were optimized by selecting six predictor variables and automated cross-validation with neural network parameters and then used to predict lithofacies on the whole data set of the 2023 half-foot intervals from the 10 cored wells with the selected network size of 35 and a damping parameter of 0.01. Predicted lithofacies results compared to actual lithofacies displays absolute accuracies of 70.37-90.82%. Incorporating adjoining lithofacies, within-one lithofacies improves accuracy slightly (93.72%). Digital logs from uncored wells were batch processed to predict lithofacies and probabilities related to each lithofacies at half-foot resolution corresponding to log units. The results were used to construct interpolated cross-sections and useful depositional patterns of St. Louis lithofacies were illustrated, e.g., the concentration of oolitic deposits (including lithofacies 5 and 6) along local highs and the relative dominance of quartz-rich carbonate grainstone (lithofacies 1) in the zones A and B of the St. Louis Limestone. Neural network techniques are applicable to other complex reservoirs, in which facies geometry and distribution are the key factors controlling heterogeneity and distribution of rock properties. Future work involves extension of the neural network to predict reservoir properties, and construction of three-dimensional geo-models. ?? 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.