A fuzzy logic approach for AUTHORS

M. M. Saggaf
Saudi Arabian Oil Com-

the estimation of facies from pany, Saudi Arabia; msaggaf@alum.mit.edu

wire-line logs Muhammad Saggaf has a B.S. degree from King

Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals and
an M.S. degree and a Ph.D. from the Massa-
M. M. Saggaf and Ed L. Nebrija chusetts Institute of Technology. He joined Saudi
Aramco in 1989 and has worked in exploration,
reservoir characterization, and research and
development. Along the way, he was awarded
ABSTRACT the Technology Achievement Award (1997),
Creative Contribution Award (2001), Society of
A method based on fuzzy logic inference can be used to identify
Exploration Geophysicists J. Clarence Karcher
lithological and depositional facies from wire-line logs. Fuzzy logic
Award (2001), and a patent for Fractal Decon-
is inherently well suited to characterizing vague and imperfectly volution (2002). He is a member of the Society
defined knowledge, a situation encountered in most geological data. of Exploration Geophysicists and AAPG, an
It can thus yield models that are simpler and more robust than those elected member of the European Academy of
based on crisp logic. The method is simple, easy to comprehend, Sciences, and president of the Dhahran Geo-
and robust. It also generates several confidence measures that can science Society.
be used to assess the quality of the analysis. Several enhancements,
Ed L. Nebrija
Saudi Arabian Oil Company,
including static and dynamic constraints, are discussed. The tech-
Saudi Arabia; edgardo.nebrija@aramco.com
nique is tested here by applying it to predict the depositional facies
of a cored well in a marine carbonate environment and comparing Ed Nebrija has a B.S. degree in physics from
the output with the facies derived from core analysis. The two the University of the Philippines and a Ph.D. in
geophysics from the University of Wisconsin,
show considerable agreement, which indicates that this method
Madison. From 1979 to 1992, he worked for
can be an effective means of predicting the facies of uncored wells
Shell Oil (United States) in various capacities
from their logs. The method has advantages when contrasted with as marine seismic party chief, explorationist,
other techniques that rely on multivariate statistics and neural and reservoir geophysicist. He is currently a
networks. Compared to those techniques, this method is simpler, consultant geophysicist at Saudi Aramco, spe-
easier to retrain, more reproducible, noniterative, and more com- cializing in the reservoir characterization of
puter efficient. offshore and onshore oil and gas fields. He is a
member of the Society of Exploration Geo-
physicists and the European Association of
INTRODUCTION Geoscientists and Engineers.

Identifying lithological and depositional facies is an essential com-

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ponent of petroleum prospecting and reservoir characterization.
Typically, few wells in any given field are cored. This is not only We would like to thank Saudi Arabian Oil
caused by the high cost associated with well coring, but also because (Saudi Aramco) for supporting this research
coring can be impractical in many situations, such as in horizontal and for granting us permission for its
publication.
wells, which are increasingly becoming the backbone of field de-
velopment in many regions around the world. However, almost
every vertical or horizontal well drilled nowadays is logged. Thus,
identifying facies from wire-line logs by correlating their log be-
havior to that of cored wells becomes a natural way of extending

Copyright #2003. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists. All rights reserved.
Manuscript received March 14, 2000; provisional acceptance January 12, 2001; revised manuscript
received December 30, 2002; final acceptance February 26, 2003.
DOI:10.1306/02260301019

AAPG Bulletin, v. 87, no. 7 (July 2003), pp. 1223 –1240 1223
the knowledge gleaned from cored wells, which sparse-
ly cover the field, to logged but uncored wells, which
commonly have a much more complete coverage of the
field. This improved knowledge of the field can sub-
sequently be used to build a fieldwide model for the
reservoir either by interpolating between the wells di-
rectly or by incorporating further sources of informa-
tion such as seismic data.
In the past, identifying facies from wire-line logs
has been carried out manually, either by mere visual
inspection or with the aid of graphical techniques like
crossplotting. However, this is a labor-intensive task
when done manually, and it becomes even more un-
wieldy as the number of log types involved increases.
Therefore, several mathematical methods have been
introduced to automate the task of facies identifica-
tion. These include methods that rely on multivariate
statistics and regression, such as principal-component
analysis (Wolff and Pelissier-Combescure, 1982) and
discriminant-factor analysis (Busch et al., 1987; Delfiner
et al., 1987), as well as techniques based on various
forms of neural networks, such as self-organizing maps
(Baldwin et al., 1990), back-propagation feed-forward
neural networks (Rogers et al., 1992; Kapur et al., 1998;
Benaouda et al., 1999), self-organizing maps (Baldwin
et al., 1990; Zhang et al., 1999), and competitive net-
works (Saggaf and Nebrija, 2000). A brief review of
these statistical and neural network methods, with a cri-
tique of the drawbacks associated with each, is given by
Saggaf and Nebrija (2000).
Nowadays, ever-smaller reservoir targets, reservoirs
with numerous compartments, and reservoirs with rel-
atively lower permeabilities are becoming increasingly
more viable to prospect and develop. This necessitates
the drilling of a larger number of wells per field and
therefore generates a lot of data. In many situations, the
volume of data is such that it is much larger than avail-
able human resources can analyze, and hence, much of
this data is left with suboptimal utilization. In other
situations, the data are analyzed soon after they are
collected, but they are then stored, and little subse-
quent use of them is made. This is because the logistical
effort of looking up the data, transferring the formats,
and other data manipulation is commonly formidable
enough that the endeavor is not undertaken or is un-
dertaken with fewer wells than are available. This is
especially true with rapidly changing computer standards
and formats, and the problem becomes even more dif-
ficult as the years go by and the data get older.
For these reasons, many companies find it more
practical to extract the relevant information from the
1224 A Fuzzy Logic Approach for the Estimation of Facies from Wire-line logs
data and incorporate it into geological models of the
field that are more accessible and easier to maintain
and update. As a result, building models allows us to
reap the benefits of the data for a long time. The orig-
inal data are kept, of course, as the potential for its
future use is always there, and these data are much
too expensive to simply discard. In addition, in many
development schemes, the field is developed in stages,
with infill and production-maintenance wells drilled
much later into the field development schedule. As
data from the newer wells are collected, the geological
models are correspondingly updated to incorporate
this new information.
A common drawback shared in the mathematical
methods described above is that it is not feasible to
update the model without access to the old data. Al-
though a neural network can be retrained with the new
data, starting from the current network status (which
represents the existing model), the network loses the
characteristics of the old data as it adapts to the new
one. This is because the old and new data are not rep-
resented equally in the model, and the network will
thus fit the characteristics of the new data at the ex-
pense of the old one. This behavior is demonstrated in
a later section of the paper. Thus, to ensure equal rep-
resentation in the model, the network has to be re-
trained using both the old and new data sets. Access to
the old data is essential to the statistical methods as
well, where the statistical model has to be rebuilt using
both the old and new data.
In this paper, we approach the problem of iden-
tifying the lithological and depositional facies from
wire-line logs using an approach based on fuzzy logic
inference, a method that allows new information to be
simply added to the existing data set without actu-
ally retrieving the old data. Fuzzy mathematical tech-
niques have been applied to solve various geological
and geophysical problems in the past, involving main-
ly classification, identification, or clustering. Imamura
(1994) and Imamura and Nakayama (1997) used fuzzy
clustering to classify soil types based on resistivity,
seismic velocity, and EM (electromagnetic) propaga-
tion velocity logs. Toumani et al. (1994) used fuzzy
clustering to determine lithology from well logs in
Upper Carboniferous coal deposits of the Ruhr basin.
Cuddy (1997) used fuzzy logic to predict permeability
and lithofacies in uncored wells to improve well-to-well
log correlations and 3-D geological model building. At
Belanak field of the West Natuna Sea, Matthews et al.
(2000) used fuzzy logic with multilinear regression
to identify rock flow units. Because no single well-log
signature is diagnostic of fracturing, Shimeld (1994)
used fuzzy inference to calculate the likelihood of frac-
turing along the length of the borehole from a suite of
well logs in the Terra Nova oil field in the Jeanne
d’Arc basin of eastern Canada.
Numerous Chinese papers, although not pub-
lished in English journals, have reported several appli-
cations of fuzzy logic in petroleum geology. In the
Xinli oil field, 68 reservoir layers previously misiden-
tified as unproductive were reanalyzed by fuzzy logic
using 13 indicators from various well logs to correctly
classify the oil layers, some of which were found to
be fractured (Fujun and Xiuzhi, 1997). Xuyan and
Zhanglong (1998) and Qingguo (1997) used fuzzy pat-
tern recognition to identify sedimentary facies in a car-
bonatite section and to recognize oil and gas from mud
logs, respectively.
In this paper, we present fuzzy logic inference as
a natural extension of conventional binary logic and
describe it in easy but rigorous terms such that it is
convenient for the practicing petroleum geologist to
implement and apply to his own problems. We also
introduce confidence measures, emphasize how they
represent an integral part of the solution because they
quantify the uncertainty in the prediction, classify these
measures into different types, and describe what in-
formation each type of measure conveys. Fuzzy logic
and neural network methods are quite different in
implementation but similar in their goals for this ap-
plication. We contrast the merits of, and differences
between, these two approaches in four different as-
pects and build a common framework that unifies the
confidence measures generated by them. Finally, we
introduce a way to constrain the fuzzy logic technique
presented here both statically and dynamically to in-
corporate into the solution either existing knowledge
of the reservoir or general geological principles. This is
an important aspect of the technique, as it can com-
pensate for the lack of data in certain situations. Other
enhancements of the method are also discussed.
The method we describe here is intuitive, easy to
comprehend, more computer efficient than the neural
network and statistical methods, and avoids the re-
quirement of keeping the entire old data set for use
with the new data when the model is to be revised.
Consequently, the model can be updated much more
conveniently than in other methods. There are addi-
tional advantages to this approach as well that we in-
vestigate in subsequent sections of the paper. However,
first, we begin with a brief background of fuzzy logic
and the inference method based on it.
FUZZY LOGIC
In contrast to binary-valued (bivalent) logic, in which a
statement can be either true or false, and hence, its
truth is ascribed either 0 or 1, multivalued (multiva-
lent) logic can ascribe any number in the interval [0,1]
to represent the degree of truth of a statement. This is a
normal extension of bivalent logic, and it is a form of
logic that humans practice naturally. For example, we
commonly use sentences like ‘‘the weather is hot’’ or
‘‘she is young’’ in the relative sense, where the truth
of such statements spans an extended ‘‘gray’’ interval
instead of being absolutely true or false (black or white).
The second sentence, for instance, is valid when some-
one is 20 or 30 yr old. However, it is unequivocally
more valid (more truthful) for the 20-yr-old. There-
fore, we may say that the statement is true to degrees
of 0.9 and 0.8 in the two cases, respectively.
Although fuzzy logic is sometimes used as a syn-
onym for multivalent logic, its more common use is to
describe the logic of fuzzy sets (Zadeh, 1965). These
are sets that have no crisp, well-defined boundaries,
and which may have elements of partial instead of full
membership. In this sense, multivalent logic becomes a
special case of fuzzy logic. For fuzzy sets, elements are
characterized by a membership function that describes
the extent of membership (or the degree of fit) of each
element to the set. Such a membership function maps
the entire domain universe to the interval [0,1]. For
example, for the set of young people, the membership
function assigns 0.9 to people of age 20 and 0.8 to
those of age 30. Thus, this set does not have a crisp
boundary, and members can belong to the set to vary-
ing degrees of fit. The membership function is shown
in Figure 1a. For each age, it assigns a measure of the
degree of fit of that age to the definition of the set
(being young). This measure is called the fuzzy possi-
bility. Note that crisp sets are special cases of fuzzy
sets, where the membership function has only two
values, 0 and 1 (Figure 1).
For crisp sets, something can either belong totally
to the set or not belong at all. There is no concept of
partial membership in crisp sets. To see how fuzzy sets
represent a more natural and intuitive way that more
closely mimics how we think, consider what would
happen had we used a crisp set instead of a fuzzy set in
our description. We could have defined our set of
young people as those of age 30 or less. The equivalent
membership function for such a crisp set is shown in
Figure 1b, where it simply assigns 1 to people of age
30 or less and 0 otherwise. However, this definition
Saggaf and Nebrija 1225
Figure 1. Membership function for
the fuzzy set of young people (a) and
membership function for the crisp set
of young people (b).
means that persons of ages 30 and 10 are equally young,
and that a 30-yr-old is young, but another who is a day
older is not young at all. Such a notion is, of course,
absurd. Note that Figure 1a shows the fuzzy possibil-
ity, not the probability, of belonging to a certain age.
We comment on the difference between possibility and
probability at the end of this section.
Such situations are abundant in geology. For exam-
ple, clastic sediments are classified according to their
particle size into gravel, sand, silt, and clay. Such a
classification is shown in Table 1, and it partitions the
domain of clastic sediments into these four sediment
types based on intervals of particle size in increments of
powers of 2 (Wentworth, 1922). The membership
function corresponding to this definition is shown in
Figure 2a. Note that for this crisp definition, a sediment
whose particle size is 2 mm (21) is classified as sand,
whereas another whose particle size is 2.0001 mm is
classified as gravel. This rather awkward partitioning is
in stark contrast to our intuitive definition, where we
commonly refer to a sediment as being ‘‘pretty much’’
sand or ‘‘mostly’’ or ‘‘virtually’’ gravel. To alleviate the
situation somewhat, each category in the scale is further
subdivided into coarse, medium, fine, and very fine
subclasses. Note that as the number of subclasses in-
creases, this classification in the limit approaches the
fuzzy description.
Clearly, there is a lot of vagueness, imperfection,
and uncertainty in the world. Crisp logic fails to ade-
1226 A Fuzzy Logic Approach for the Estimation of Facies from Wire-line logs
quately describe this imperfection. However, fuzzy
logic is inherently well suited to characterizing vague
and imperfectly defined knowledge and can yield a
more robust description. For example, we can replace
the crisp classification of clastic sediments with a fuzzy
one, whose membership function is shown in Figure 2b
(the curves are asymmetric because of the logarithmic
scale). With such a definition, we may say that a sedi-
ment whose particle size is 1 mm (20) is sand to a degree
of 0.9, whereas a sediment whose particle size is 3 mm
(21.5) is sand to a degree of only 0.2. The latter is gravel,
however, to a degree of 0.9 (the two cases are indicated
in the figure with gray vertical lines). This is more in
line with our intuitive classification of such sediments
and how we perceive them.
Note that in this example, the values of the mem-
bership function (the possibilities) do not add up to 1
(e.g., 0.2 and 0.9). This is quite unlike what we know
of probabilities (which must add up to 1), and it is a
byproduct of the difference between the two concepts,
a difference that can sometimes be confusing. The two
concepts (possibility and probability) describe two dis-
tinct types of uncertainty (Fang and Chen, 1990). The
former describes vagueness (fuzziness) and expresses
the degree of fit of a certain observation to our defi-
nition. The latter describes ambiguity and expresses
a certain observation actually occurring. To illustrate
this, consider this statement made before two wells
are drilled: ‘‘The possibility that the first well is
Table 1. Crisp Classification Scale for Clastic Sediments Based
on Particle Sizes in Increments of Powers of Two (Wentworth,
1922)*
*The equivalent membership function is shown on Figure 2a.
economically viable is 0.8, whereas the probability that
the second well is economically viable is 0.8.’’ Although
the two numbers are the same, they describe different
notions. The probability indicates that the likelihood of
this well being economically viable is 0.8. There is an
80% chance of finding oil in sufficient quantities in this
well. However, there is a chance that the well could
very well turn out to be a dry hole. The possibility does
not relate to likelihood or chance at all. It simply ex-
presses the information that the well fits our definition
of what we consider to be an economically viable well
by 0.8 (the source of such information does not concern
us here). This well is going to be better than average in
what we consider good wells, it is not going to be great,
but neither is it going to be a dry hole. In fact, after the
wells are drilled, the probability would either be 0 (in
case the second well does not have oil in economic
quantities) or 1 (otherwise). However, the possibility
would remain the same.
FUZZY INFERENCE
The objective here is to infer the lithological and dep-
ositional facies from the logs. How is that performed in
the context of fuzzy logic? We start with an example.
Identifying Fruit by Color and Taste
Let us assume that we want to differentiate between
three types of fruit (lemons, oranges, and apples) based
on color and taste. An intuitive way of classifying the
different fruits is to employ the common sense rules:
if color is red or taste is sweet; then it is an apple
if color is orange or taste is acidic; then it is an orange
if color is yellow or taste is quite acidic; then it is a lemon
ð1Þ
This is a simple rule-based crisp logic inference system
that consists of three rules, one for each fruit class. Each
rule has two clauses, one for each property. The prob-
lem with this system, however, is that each property is
specified as a crisp attribute, whereas these properties
are naturally vague, and each spans an interval. For ex-
ample, apples come in varying degrees of sweetness,
and lemons span several shades of yellow.
To extend this system to use fuzzy logic, we keep
the same rule set (1), but the properties become fuzzy,
and each is expressed by a membership function. To
obtain these membership functions, we need only ex-
amine a few known fruits and build histograms that
describe the number of objects of each fruit type having
a particular color and taste. Each of these histograms is
Saggaf and Nebrija 1227
Figure 2. Membership functions for
the crisp classification of clastic sedi-
ments (a) and membership functions
for the fuzzy classification of clastic
sediments (b). The gray vertical lines
indicate examples of sediments of two
specific particle sizes.

normalized to 1 (to convert frequency to possibility) and
fit with a membership function. This is shown in Figures
3 and 4 for the properties of color and taste, respectively.
There are several types of membership functions that
can be used, as shown in Figure 5. They include the
triangular, trapezoidal, Gaussian, and double-Gaussian
membership functions. We use the simplest one here, a
triangular membership function, to illustrate the
method in simple terms. The choice of the membership
function in general affects the accuracy of the eventual

Figure 3. For fruit, these histograms

and membership functions show the
color property of lemons (a), oranges
(b), and apples (c). For facies, these are
histograms and membership functions
for the gamma-ray log values of the
facies back barrier (BB, a), lithocodium-
coral shelf (LICO, b), and open algal
platform (OAP, c).

1228 A Fuzzy Logic Approach for the Estimation of Facies from Wire-line logs

prediction results, as a poor choice would not accurately
capture the possibilities of the data. It is clear, for ex-
ample, that a triangular membership function is some-
what too simple to capture the behavior of some of these
histograms (for example, the histogram in Figure 4c). A
Figure 4. Using fruit as an example,
these histograms and membership
functions illustrate the taste property of
lemons (a), oranges (b), and apples (c).
For facies, these are histograms and
membership functions for the sonic log
values of the facies back barrier (BB, a),
lithocodium-coral shelf (LICO, b), and
open algal platform (OAP, c).
better choice would improve the final model. We discuss
this further in a later section of the paper.
Figure 6 shows the membership functions for each
property. There are three of these functions for each
property because we have three different fruit types. In
Figure 5. Examples of membership-
function types: triangular (a), trapezoidal
(b), Gaussian (c), and double Gaussian (d).
Saggaf and Nebrija 1229
Figure 6. For fruit, these are member-
ship functions of all fruits for the color (a)
and taste (b) properties. The gray vertical
lines indicate the properties of a particular
fruit object to be identified. For facies,
these are membership functions of all
facies for the gamma-ray (a) and sonic
(b) logs. The gray vertical lines indicate the
log values present at a particular depth
whose facies is to be identified.

this figure, the gray vertical lines show the properties for a particular property. Instead, we use the probabi-
observed of a fruit object to be identified. Identification listic or operator, defined by:
is straightforward. Because this object has the highest
possibility of being an apple according to color (0.65 vs. a  b ¼ a þ b  ab ð2Þ
0 and 0.2 for lemons and oranges, respectively) and the
highest possibility of being an apple according to taste A multitude of other t-conorms are available, each
(0.9 vs. 0 and 0.2 for lemons and oranges, respectively), having properties that can be advantageous in certain
it is identified as an apple. As can be seen from this situations (Kaufmann and Gupta, 1988; Klir and Yuan,
example, this inference system is quite intuitive. We 1995). Some of these t-conorms are shown in Table 2.
will now describe it in slightly more rigorous terms. However, we will adhere to the simple probabilistic or
For an unidentified object, each of the clauses in operator for our purposes.
the rule set (1) produces a value for the membership
function. This value can be read directly off of Figure 6.
For example, the clause ‘‘color is red’’ for apples pro- Table 2. Examples of Fuzzy t-Conorms (Kaufmann and
duces a value of 0.65, because this is the value of the Gupta, 1988; Klir and Yuan, 1995)*
color membership function for apples at that particular
color value (this value is indicated by the gray vertical Fuzzy t-Conorms
line in Figure 6a). Values for other clauses are found in a  b ¼ maxða; bÞ
a similar fashion. Each clause then corresponds to a
fuzzy possibility. The two fuzzy clauses in each rule in ab¼aþbab
rule set (1) are combined with the ‘‘or’’ operator. Math- aþb
a  b ¼ 1þab
ematically, the fuzzy possibilities corresponding to these h i
1
two clauses are combined with a so-called t-conorm, a a  b ¼ min 1; ðaw þ bw Þw ; w>0
fuzzy union operator. The simplest such t-conorm is
the max operator, where the result is the maximum of a  b ¼ aþbþðr2Þab
rþðr1Þab
; r>0
the two fuzzy possibilities. We will not use this oper-
a  b ¼ minð1; a þ b þ labÞ; l > 1
ator here, as it saturates much too quickly and does not
penalize an object for having a low membership value *Each can be used to combine the clauses of a fuzzy rule.

1230 A Fuzzy Logic Approach for the Estimation of Facies from

 For every unidentified object, each rule produces a
fuzzy possibility. This value is the possibility (or degree
of fit) that the object is a member of the corresponding
fruit type. We pick the fruit type to which the object
has the highest possibility of belonging and identify
the object as being of that fruit type. This technique
can be regarded as a version of the Takagi-Sugeno in-
ference method (Sugeno, 1985; Takagi and Sugeno,
1985) or the more general Mamdani inference method
(Mamdani and Assilian, 1975).
Identifying Facies by Gamma-Ray and Sonic Logs
Although identifying apples and oranges may seem a
far cry from identifying lithological and depositional
facies, there is a perfect correspondence between the
two cases. The same fuzzy inference system developed
above can thus be applied to identifying facies. First, we
replace the fruit types with the facies. The ones we
consider here are the back barrier (BB), Lithocodium-
coral shelf (LICO), and open algal platform (OAP) fa-
cies, which are described in the next section. Then, we
replace the color and taste properties with the gamma-
ray (GR) and sonic (DT) log values. Just as each fruit is
assigned a membership function that describes the typ-
ical color and taste of that fruit, each facies type is as-
signed a membership function that describes the typical
log values exhibited by that facies in this area.
The membership functions are built via histograms
of the log values that each facies assumes. This infor-
mation is derived from examination of known facies of
cored wells in the area. The histograms and member-
ship functions shown previously in Figures 3 and 4 are
not actually those of fruit. They are of the log values for
the BB, LICO, and OAP facies, which we derived from
core analysis of a well in a marine carbonate environ-
ment in eastern Saudi Arabia (referred to as well B).
Once these membership functions are constructed,
they are ready to be used to identify the facies of an
uncored well by passing this well’s log values through
the inference system we have described. The rules in
this case become
if gamma ray is OAP or sonic is OAP; then the facies is OAP
if gamma ray is LICO or sonic is LICO; then the facies is LICO
if gamma ray is BB or sonic is BB; then the facies is BB
ð3Þ
As we mentioned in the case of fruit, the clause
‘‘gamma ray is OAP’’ expresses the degree of fit of a
particular gamma-ray log value (say 17j API) to the
typical gamma-ray log values of the OAP facies. This
value can be read directly off Figure 6a, just as we did
in the fruit example, and it is found to be 0.65 (indi-
cated by the gray vertical line). The same holds for the
other clauses. In this case, we can determine from Fig-
ure 6 that a point in the well of unknown facies that
has a gamma-ray value of 17j API and a sonic-log value
of 75 ms/ft should be identified as OAP because that
point has the highest possibility of being OAP accord-
ing to both the gamma-ray and sonic logs (these values
are indicated by the gray vertical lines in the figure).
More generally, for each point in the well where
the facies is to be identified, the membership values
(possibilities) of each of the clauses in the rule set (3)
are looked up, and the probabilistic or operator is used to
combine the possibilities of the clauses in each rule.
The facies whose rule produces the highest possibility is
picked as the facies that the well possesses at that point.
This is because that point has the highest possibility
of belonging to that particular facies according to this
technique.
APPLICATION TO WELL DATA
We applied the fuzzy logic inference method described
above to the identification of depositional facies of a
vertical oil well in the marine carbonate environment
of the Lower Cretaceous Shu’aiba Formation in eastern
Saudi Arabia. Those carbonates formed from deposi-
tion on a carbonate ramp along the irregular margins of
an intrashelf basin (Aktas et al., 1999). The deposi-
tional facies present in this area are OAP, deep open
platform (DOP), LICO, lagoonal (LAG), BB, and ru-
dist barrier (RB) facies.
The OAP facies is typically thin (15– 20 ft) and
consists of wackestones and packstones characterized
by the consistent presence of the calcareous alga, Litho-
codium aggregatum. The DOP facies is also commonly
thin and is comprised almost entirely of planktonic
‘‘chalky’’ lime mudstones and wackestones deposited
under low-energy platform conditions. The LICO fa-
cies contains encrusting calcareous alga (L. aggregatum)
together with simple corals and represents inner ramp
deposits partially barred from the open marine basin
by rudist shoals. The LAG facies is relatively high in
detrital mud content and consistently contains skeletal
fragments of the elevator rudist Agriopleura spp. The
BB facies consists of wackestones and packstones with
abundant large skeletal fragments of Glossomyophorus
and Pachytraga elevator rudists. The RB facies were
Saggaf and Nebrija 1231
deposited in the high-energy barrier banks and shoals of
a ramp crest complex separating the lagoon and the open
marine basin. They typically consist of crossbedded, mud-
starved packstones and grainstones that contain abun-
dant, large reworked fragments of Offneria murgensis
rudists, arranged into upward-shoaling cycles.
Four logs are used here: gamma-ray (GR), neutron
porosity (NPHI), density (RHOB), and sonic (DT). The
fuzzy rule set (3) then becomes
For logj ¼ fGR; NPHI; RHOB; DTg and
Faciesi ¼ fRB; BB; LAG; LICO; OAP; DOPg
L
4 from the logs (Figure 7c) and those derived from the
previously in Figures 3 and 4. Although the test well
(well A) is cored, we pretend that it is not, for the pur-
pose of testing the accuracy of the method. The cores of
this well are not used during the inference procedure.
They are only used afterwards for confirmation.
The logs of the test well are passed through the
fuzzy logic inference system to predict the facies in the
well. Once this is performed, the predicted facies are
compared to the actual facies derived from the cores
to assess the accuracy of the method. The result is
shown in Figure 7, which displays the facies identified
if ½logj is Faciesi ; then the facies is Faciesi
j¼1
This produces a rule set that consists of six rules (each
corresponds to a facies type), and each rule has four
clauses (each corresponds to a log type). The symbol 
indicates the union of the four clauses, which is im-
plemented by computing the probabilistic or operator
of the fuzzy possibilities of these clauses. The mem-
bership functions are constructed from the logs and
core-derived facies of a nearby well (well B), which is a
cored well located a few kilometers away from the test
well. Some of these membership functions were shown
ð4Þ core analysis (Figure 7b). Figure 7a displays both the
log-derived and core-derived facies in a graphical plot.
The two facies sequences show considerable agree-
ment, and the accuracy of the output is equivalent to
that produced by the competitive network method
described by Saggaf and Nebrija (2000). The agree-
ment is good, even keeping in mind the crudity of the
triangular membership functions employed for this
analysis. The indication here is that this method can be
an effective means for identifying the facies of uncored
wells by making use of the logs of these wells and the
log and core information of nearby cored wells.

Figure 7. Comparison of the facies pre-

dicted by the fuzzy inference method
(solid) with the facies derived from the
cores (dashed) (a), the core facies (b), and
the facies predicted by the fuzzy inference
method (c). The numbers in (b) and (c)
correspond to the facies numbers in (a).

1232 A Fuzzy Logic Approach for the Estimation of Facies from Wire-line logs
CONFIDENCE MEASURES
One of the principal advantages of fuzzy logic is that it
represents a natural way to capture and describe vague-
ness and uncertainty in the data. Humans describe un-
certainty and confidence qualitatively. For example, a
geologist may say that the logs are inconclusive in a
particular zone of the well, and so his analysis there is
suspect. In other words, his confidence of the analysis
there is low. However, in another zone of the well, the
logs have quite distinct characteristics, and so he has a
lot of confidence in the analysis of that zone. The same
type of information can be captured and described quan-
titatively in the fuzzy logic inference method described
above. The three types of confidence measures generated
by the technique are individual possibility, overall pos-
sibility, and distinction.
Individual Possibility
This is the degree of fit (resemblance) of the log values
at a particular point in the well to the log behavior typ-
ically exemplified by a given facies. A measure is gen-
erated for each facies type at each point in the well. Each
measure corresponds to one of the rules in the fuzzy
rule set (e.g., in rule set (1), (3), or (4)). For example, if a
certain point in the well has log values that are quite
similar to the values that the BB facies typically assumes,
then at that point, the individual possibility correspond-
ing to the BB facies would be the highest. The highest
three individual possibility measures in an interval of
well A are shown in Figure 8b. For reference, the iden-
tified facies in this interval are displayed in Figure 8a.
Recall from our previous description of the inference
method that the facies of the highest possibility will
be identified as the facies present at that location of
the well.
Overall Possibility
This measure is the highest of the individual possibil-
ities at each point in the well. It is a measure of the de-
gree of fit of the log values at a particular point in the
well to the log behavior typically exemplified by the
facies identified at that location. One such measure is
generated for each point in the well, and it corresponds
Figure 8. Plots for a partial interval
of the test well: facies identified by
the fuzzy inference method (a), the
highest three individual possibility
measures corresponding to the rudist
barrier (solid), back barrier (dashed),
and lithocodium-coral shelf (gray)
facies (b), overall possibility measure
(c), and distinction measure (d). Note
that panels (b) and (c) have different
vertical scales.
Saggaf and Nebrija 1233
to the rule in the fuzzy rule set (e.g., in rule set (1), (3),
or (4)) that has the highest possibility at that location in
the well. The overall possibility measure for an interval
of well A is shown in Figure 8c.
Distinction
This is a measure of how distinct the log behavior at a
particular point of the well is from the behavior exem-
plified by all facies other than the one identified there.
A high distinction means that the logs at that location
have a behavior that is quite distinct and far away from
the log behavior of all facies except the one to which
the logs there belong. A low distinction means that the
logs are inconclusive. In fact, zero distinction indicates
that the location could be ascribed to two different fa-
cies equally well. This measure is computed as the dif-
ference between the two highest individual possibilities
at each location in the well. The distinction measure
for an interval of well A is shown in Figure 8d.
The measures described here (individual possibil-
ity, overall possibility, and distinction) are equivalent
to those produced by the competitive network method
of Saggaf and Nebrija (2000), which are the individual
similarity, overall similarity, and distinction. However,
the two sets of measures are computed differently. More-
over, it must be noted that the measures produced by
the fuzzy logic system are more natural and easier to
comprehend, and they correlate to the mechanics of the
Figure 9. Histogram for the density log
and the deep open platform facies fitted by
triangular (a), trapezoidal (b), and double-
Gaussian (c) membership functions.
1234 A Fuzzy Logic Approach for the Estimation of Facies from Wire-line logs
inference system to a greater extent than those of the
competitive network method.
METHOD ENHANCEMENTS
There are several enhancements to the fuzzy inference
method presented here that can increase its effective-
ness and improve the accuracy of its predictions. These
are described below.
More Accurate Membership Functions
In our example, we have used the least complicated
membership function (the triangular function) to illus-
trate the method in simple terms. However, it is evi-
dent that in many situations, this membership function
is too weak to capture the intricacies of the behavior of
well logs for some facies. Figure 9a shows an example
where the histogram for the density log and the DOP
facies is rather poorly fit by the triangular membership
function. No choice of the parameters for this function
would improve the situation much, because the shape
of the histogram is just not well suited for the triangular
function. Replacing the triangular function by a trape-
zoidal function (Figure 9b) or a double-Gaussian func-
tion (Figure 9c) improves the fit to the behavior of the
data and leads to an improvement in the overall
accuracy of the method.
Emphasizing and De-emphasizing Logs
Different types of logs have varying relevance and
importance in facies identification. For example, the
gamma-ray log has been traditionally regarded as a good
indicator of the energy of the depositional environment
and has thus played a significant role in identifying facies.
This qualitative emphasis can be captured and imple-
mented quite naturally in the fuzzy logic inference pro-
cess described here. For example, the statement ‘‘I have
more confidence in the gamma-ray log in this interval
than in other logs’’ can be implemented by means of
emphasizing the possibility of the gamma-ray log by
scaling down the possibilities of the clauses of all other
logs in all rules (in rule set (4): i = 1 – 6, j = 2 – 4). The
amount of adjustment may be proportional to the de-
gree of confidence in the gamma-ray log (we elaborate
on this below when we talk about constraints). Further-
more, if a particular log is known to be bad (e.g., too
noisy) in a certain interval of the well, it can be de-
emphasized by multiplying its possibility for that in-
terval by a scale factor, or it can be eliminated alto-
gether from consideration in the inference system in a
particular zone of the well by multiplying its possibil-
ity in that zone by zero.
Static and Dynamic Constraints
The fuzzy logic inference system allows a geologist to
incorporate his biases and previous knowledge and
experience, as well as general geological principles and
notions, into the inference process. One place in which
this previous knowledge can be applied is while con-
structing the membership functions. These functions,
if desired, can be adjusted at will to reflect the inter-
preter’s knowledge of the log characteristics of each
facies. The histograms serve as a guide to constructing
the membership functions. However, one need not stick
to them faithfully, and deviation from them is left to
the discretion of the geologist. In fact, if a geologist
desires to construct the membership functions from
scratch without reference to any cored well, he is able
to do that. In this case, however, the model becomes
completely subjective.
Another more common place to inject one’s
biases and previous knowledge is after evaluating the
individual possibilities, just prior to picking the final
identified facies. At this stage, facies that are deemed
unlikely at certain depth may be de-emphasized by
scaling down their individual possibilities (previously,
we described adjusting down the possibilities of the
logs; here, we are concerned with those of the facies).
For example, from general knowledge of the reservoir
gleaned from other wells in this region, it was deemed
unlikely that the RB facies is present below 4850 ft at
well A. The individual possibility for this facies below
this depth was thus adjusted down by 50%. This re-
sulted in the facies not being assigned below this depth
because its individual possibility was never the highest
possibility below this depth after adjustment. The ac-
curacy of the prediction thus improved, as shown in
Figure 10 (compare with Figure 7).
Figure 11 shows the possibilities of the RB at an
interval in well A below 4850 ft, before and after ad-
justment (top and bottom panels, respectively). The
LICO facies, which has the next highest possibility,
became the identified facies after the possibility of the
RB facies was adjusted. The LICO facies was therefore
picked as the facies present in this interval of the well,
improving the prediction accuracy.
Other qualitative de-emphasis can also be accom-
modated. For example, had the RB facies been deemed
somewhat unlikely to be present below 4850 ft, the
adjustment could have been only by 10% down. A fa-
cies that is highly unlikely to be present could have its
possibility adjusted down by 90%, and a facies that is
known not to exist below that depth could have its pos-
sibility multiplied by zero, thus precluding that facies
from being identified in the interval below that depth.
This form of constraint can be regarded as static, as
its description refers to fixed depth intervals instead of
relative facies locations. Dynamic constraints can also
be implemented by scaling the possibility values. These
constraints express general geological notions and deal
with relative facies locations instead of fixed depth
intervals. For example, one may want to enforce the
constraint that facies B is unlikely below facies A. Note
that no fixed depth was specified here, only a relative
location with respect to another facies in the well. In
this case, the possibility of facies B at all depth points
below the shallowest depth at which facies A was iden-
tified will be scaled down appropriately. Examples of
other dynamic constraints are ‘‘facies A and B are un-
likely to adjoin’’ and ‘‘facies B is highly likely to follow
facies A.’’
Similar constraints can be implemented in the com-
petitive network method of Saggaf and Nebrija (2000).
However, just like in the case of the confidence mea-
sures, the constraints follow more naturally in the frame-
work of fuzzy logic and the concept of possibility or
degree of fit, and they are easier to understand and re-
late to the mechanism of the method.
Saggaf and Nebrija 1235
Figure 10. Comparison of the facies
predicted by the constrained fuzzy infer-
ence method (solid) with the facies derived
from the cores (dashed) (a), the core fa-
cies (b), and the facies predicted by the
constrained fuzzy inference method (c).
Compare these with those shown in Figure
7. The numbers in (b) and (c) correspond
to the facies numbers in (a).

COMPARISON TO THE NEURAL
NETWORK METHODS
Saggaf and Nebrija (2000) described an accurate and
efficient method to identify lithological and depositional
facies from wire-line logs by competitive neural net-
works. The fuzzy logic inference method we described
here has several advantages over competitive networks
and other methods based on neural networks, how-
ever. These advantages are stated below.

Figure 11. Plots for a partial interval of

the test well: possibilities resulting from
the inference method for the rudist bar-
rier (solid) and lithocodium-coral shelf
(dashed) facies before adjustment (a) and
after adjustment (b) to penalize the rudist
barrier facies for being unlikely in this
interval.

1236 A Fuzzy Logic Approach for the Estimation of Facies from Wire-line logs
Simplicity and Intuition
The fuzzy logic method is simple and easy to com-
prehend by the nonspecialist. This is because it is a
natural extension of how we think and operate. In fact,
comparing the fuzzy inference technique with how
humans go about making inferences, one finds many
similarities between the two, as we humans implicitly
think in degrees of fit and compare with previous ex-
perience when we classify objects. Neural networks,
however, are opaque, and the intricacies of their con-
struction and application can be intimidating.
Easier Retraining
As we mentioned in the Introduction, one of the prob-
lems of the neural network and statistical methods
is that old data must be present when retraining the
method with new data. Otherwise, the new model would
not generalize well to fit the old data. When a neural
network is trained with new data that have a some-
what different behavior than the old one, the network
will fit the new data well, but the accuracy will suffer
for the old data. In fact, this problem is present even
when incrementally training a network on a single data
set, as the network is influenced by the order of pre-
sentation of the data. This is why the input vectors to
the network during training are most commonly ran-
domly permuted, so that the order of presentation is
random at each iteration. This tends to stabilize the
network and improve its convergence.
The fuzzy logic inference method does not suffer
from this problem. Once the histograms are constructed,
the original data can be discarded. When new data ar-
rive, their histograms are merged with the old ones, and
new membership functions are fitted. Thus, only the
histograms need to be retained, a small fraction of the
old data. The properties of the old data needed for
the fuzzy logic analysis are embodied in the histograms.
We illustrate this with a synthetic example. A data
set is used to train a supervised competitive network
and also to construct a fuzzy logic model. For sim-
plicity, the data are assumed to contain only two facies
and one log. The histograms and membership functions
for this data set are shown in Figure 12a. Both the
neural network and fuzzy logic methods produce very
accurate results when their respective models are ap-
plied on this data set. This is shown in Figure 13a. Then,
a new data set is added. The neural network is trained
on this data set starting from the existing network that
was derived from the old data. For the fuzzy logic in-
ference system, the histograms of the data, old and
new, are combined, and new membership functions are
fitted. The histograms of the new data are shown in Fig-
ure 12b. The combined histograms are shown in Fig-
ure 12c, along with the newly constructed member-
ship functions (the histogram of each facies is always
Figure 12. A synthetic data set with two
facies (F1 and F2) and one log showing
histograms and membership functions of
the old data set (a), histograms of the new
data set (b), and combined histograms of
the old and new data sets (c), with fitted
membership functions for the combined
histograms.
Saggaf and Nebrija 1237
Figure 13. Percentage accuracy of the
output of the neural network and fuzzy
inference methods when (a) both the
neural network and fuzzy logic methods
are trained and applied on the old data
set, (b) the neural network is trained on
the new data set, the fuzzy logic method
is trained on the combined histograms,
both are applied to the new data set, and
(c) the neural network is trained on the
new data set, the fuzzy logic method is
trained on the combined histograms,
both are applied to the old data set.
NN = neural network; FL = fuzzy logic.

normalized to 1 to convert it to possibilities). For both Reproducibility

the neural network and the fuzzy logic methods, the
new model fits the new data well (Figure 13b).
However, the new fuzzy logic model also fits the old
data well, whereas the neural network model produces
substandard results on the old data (Figure 13c). In
fact, the neural network misidentified most all the old
data points centered around 2 (about half of the old
data set), as its neurons migrated far away from this
center (there are virtually no data points in this region
in the new data set) to fit the new data points centered
around 3.5 (Table 3 shows the neuron values of the old
and new networks). Although this example shows an
extreme case, it serves to illustrate the point, nonetheless.
Table 3. Neuron Values When the Neural Network Is Trained
on the Old Data Set (Middle Column) and the New Data Set
(Right Column)*
Neuron Number Value at Old Model Value at New Model
1 0.96
2 1.45
3 2.13
4 1.63
*The neurons migrate to fit the new data set at the expense of the old one.
In neural networks, random numbers are commonly
used to initialize the network and are also used for the
permutation of the input to randomize the order of
presentation to the network (to improve stability and
convergence, as we mentioned earlier). Fuzzy logic in-
ference does not employ the concept of an initial mod-
el, and thus, no randomness is needed to initialize the
model. Furthermore, because the fuzzy logic method
is not iterative, the order of presentation is not rele-
vant (membership functions are constructed from his-
tograms; there is no order of presentation here). Both
of these issues mean that the fuzzy logic inference pre-
diction is more reproducible than the corresponding
neural network output, in which two results may be
obtained for the same input, depending on the random
initial state of the network and order of presentation.
Computer efficiency
Because the fuzzy logic method is not iterative, it is
1.05
much more computer efficient than neural networks,
2.36
which may take a long time to converge to the solution,
3.56
depending on the size and behavior of the data. In addi-
2.45
tion, convergence problems (poor convergence, no con-
vergence, oscillation, etc.) are eliminated altogether.

1238 A Fuzzy Logic Approach for the Estimation of Facies from Wire-line logs
 These advantages do not mean, however, that the
fuzzy logic inference method is not without drawbacks.
Modeling (fitting) the histograms with membership
functions can be quite laborious if done manually. For-
tunately, this labor can be avoided by automatic fitting
of the histograms. The membership functions employed
in this paper were all fitted automatically by nonlinear
least-squares optimization. Because the number of mem-
bership functions and the number of parameters for
each function are small, this is a very quick and effi-
cient operation. (The objective function was tailored
so as to penalize negative errors slightly more than pos-
itive ones; this produces more plausible membership
function fits.) It is recommended, however, that this
fitting be checked after optimization, to ensure the ac-
curacy of the fitting and to adjust the membership func-
tions, if desired, until they look right. Note that if a lot
of data are available, the histograms would be smooth
in general. In this case, the histograms themselves can
be used as the membership functions, and no fitting
by a particular function is necessary. When there are
few data, the manual (or semimanual, automatic with
some supervision) modeling of the membership func-
tions represents the ‘‘subjective’’ input into the model.
The operator makes up for missing data using his
knowledge and background to come up with a rea-
sonable model (membership functions).
Another drawback of the fuzzy logic method is
that it is constrained in the limits of the input (train-
ing) data set, whereas neural networks are not (how-
ever, neural networks are rather poor extrapolators
beyond the training data sets). Moreover, fuzzy logic is
heavily dependent on the membership functions. A
poor choice of the membership function type or a
poor choice of its parameters (such that it does not fit
the histograms well) can lead to substandard predic-
tion results. Finally, excessive use of the interpreter’s
own biases and prior knowledge can lead to a very
subjective prediction.
CONCLUSIONS
There is an abundance of vagueness, imperfection, and
uncertainty in geological data. Crisp logic fails to ade-
quately describe this imperfection. However, fuzzy logic
is inherently well suited to characterizing vague and
imperfectly defined knowledge, and it can thus yield
a simple but more accurate description. We proposed
here a method based on fuzzy logic inference to iden-
tify lithological and depositional facies from wire-line
logs. The method is simple, easy to comprehend, and
robust. Furthermore, the method can be enhanced by
emphasizing certain logs and ascribing static and dy-
namic constraints. The analysis may be assessed through
various confidence measures, including distinction, over-
all possibility, and individual possibility, and iterated,
depending on the results of these measures. Applica-
tion to well data indicates that the method can predict
the facies of uncored wells with good accuracy that
rivals those of other methods, such as the methods
based on statistics and neural network methods. The
fuzzy inference method has several advantages over the
statistical and neural networks methods, however. It
is simpler, easier to retrain, more reproducible, non-
iterative, and more computer efficient. Moreover, up-
dating the model to handle new data can be performed
conveniently without having full access to the old data
and without sacrificing the generality of fitting both
the old and new data well.
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