Insights into the Application of Machine Learning in Reservoir Engineering: Current Developments and Future Trends

• Published in: Energies (Basel) Vol. 16; no. 3; p. 1392
• Main Authors: Wang, Hai, Chen, Shengnan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.01.2023
• Subjects: Algorithms; challenges; Computational linguistics; Data mining; Engineering; Hydrocarbons; Language processing; Learning algorithms; Machine learning; Natural gas; Natural language interfaces; Neural networks; Oil and gas exploration; Oil and gas industry; Partial differential equations; Permeability; Petroleum engineering; Petroleum production; Porous media; production forecasting; reservoir characterization; Reservoir engineering; Reservoirs; Support vector machines; Time series; Trends; well test analysis
• ISSN: 1996-1073; 1996-1073
• DOI: 10.3390/en16031392

In the past few decades, the machine learning (or data-driven) approach has been broadly adopted as an alternative to scientific discovery, resulting in many opportunities and challenges. In the oil and gas sector, subsurface reservoirs are heterogeneous porous media involving a large number of complex phenomena, making their characterization and dynamic prediction a real challenge. This study provides a comprehensive overview of recent research that has employed machine learning in three key areas: reservoir characterization, production forecasting, and well test interpretation. The results show that machine learning can automate and accelerate many reservoirs engineering tasks with acceptable level of accuracy, resulting in more efficient and cost-effective decisions. Although machine learning presents promising results at this stage, there are still several crucial challenges that need to be addressed, such as data quality and data scarcity, the lack of physics nature of machine learning algorithms, and joint modelling of multiple data sources/formats. The significance of this research is that it demonstrates the potential of machine learning to revolutionize the oil and gas sector by providing more accurate and efficient solutions for challenging problems.