Permeability Prediction in Carbonate Reservoirs using Specific Area, Porosity and Water
Saturation
M.Sitouah* , M.Al-Hamoud and Y.Bougerira, Sclumberger Ltd, O. Abdullatif, King Fahd University of Petroleum
and Minerals
Abstract
This paper presents a comparative study of the
capabilities of Extreme Learning Machines
(ELM), Decision Trees (DT) and Artificial
Neural Networks (ANN), in the prediction of
permeability from specific surface area, porosity
and water saturation. ANN has been applied in
the prediction of various oil and gas properties
but with limitations such as computational
instability due to its lack of global optima. ELM
and DT are recent advances in Artificial
Intelligence with improved architectures and
better performance.
The techniques were optimized and applied to
the same carbonate reservoir field dataset .
Following the popular convention and to ensure
fairness, a stratified sampling approach was used
to randomly extract 70% of the dataset for
training while the remaining 30% was used for
testing.
The results showed that ELM performed best
with the highest correlation coefficient, lowest
root mean square error and shortest execution
time. This agrees perfectly with the literature
that ELM has a more compact architecture
optimized for faster execution than the original
ANN. DT was also found to be a promising
technique for reservoir modeling.
The results showed that ELM performed best
with the highest correlation coefficient, lowest
root mean square error and shortest execution
time. This agrees perfectly with the literature
that ELM has a more compact architecture
optimized for faster execution than the original
ANN. DT was also found to be a promising
technique for reservoir modeling.
Introduction
Recently there has been a lot of interest in the
area of artificial intelligence research. This is a
© 2014 SEG
SEG Denver 2014 Annual Meeting
multi disciplinary and integrating research,
involving experts from engineering,
mathematics and computer science. ANN is one
of the most used algorithms in the prediction of
reservoir properties. Ideally a good predictor
algorithm should produce high prediction
accuracy with minimal computational
complexity. The motivation in the present paper
is to show the performance of the extreme
learning machines (ELM) and decision tress (
DT) against the application of back propagation
neural network (BPNNs) .
A total of 66 points have been used in this
research work. Among them, 20 points were
used for testing and validating the algorithms,
where 46 points were used to train and learn the
different paradigms.
Theory and Methodology
ELM is a unified framework of broad type of
generalized single-hidden layer feed forward
networks, first developed by Huang et al. Unlike
traditional popular learning methods, ELM
requires less human interventions and can run
thousands times faster than those conventional
methods. ELM automatically determines all the
network parameters analytically, which avoids
trivial human intervention and makes it efficient
in online and real-time applications.
ELM was proposed to solve the problem caused
by gradient-based algorithms. In the other hand
Decision Tree Learning, as a data mining and
machine learning technique uses a decision tree
as a predictive model which maps observations
about a problem to conclusions about the
problem's target value. More descriptive names
for the tree models are classification trees or
regression trees. In these tree structures, leaves
represent classifications and branches represent
conjunctions of features that lead to those
classifications. Decision tree (DT) learning is a
DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1190/segam2014-0021.1
Page 2709
 common method used in data mining with the
goal of creating a model that predicts the value
of a targetvariable based on several input
variables. Each interior node corresponds to one
of the input variables; there are edges to children
for each of the possible values of that input
variable. Each leaf represents A value of target
variable given the values of the input variables
represented by the path from the root to the leaf.
Extreme Learning Machine (ELM)
ELM is a unified framework of broad type of
generalized single-hidden layer feedforward
networks. Unlike traditional popular learning
methods, ELM requires less human
interventions and can run thousands times faster
than those conventional methods. ELM
automatically determines all the network
parameters analytically, which avoids trivial
human intervention and makes it efficient in
online and real-time applications. The various
versions available for ELM are: the basic
Extreme learning machine, Incremental extreme
learning machine and online sequential extreme
learning machine. It was proposed to solve the
problem caused by gradient-based algorithms.
ELM randomly chooses the input weights and
analytically determines the output weights of
SLFN. ELM has much better generalization
performance with much faster learning speed.
However, ELM does not consider the network
structure features and the involved problem
properties and its generalization performance
with much faster learning speed. However, ELM
does not consider the network structure features
and the involved problem properties and its
generalization performance is also limited.
Classification Tree analysis is when the
predicted outcome is the class to which the data
belongs while Regression Tree analysis is when
the predicted outcome can be considered a real
number (e.g. the price of a house, or a patient’s
length of stay in a hospital). Tree-based
techniques such as CHi-squared Automatic
Interaction Detector (CHAID) and Random
Forest are used for classification tasks while
others such as Classification And Regression
© 2014 SEG
SEG Denver 2014 Annual Meeting
Tree (CART) analysis and Boosting Trees can
be used for both regression-type and
classification-type problems.
Some of the algorithms that are used for
constructing decision trees include: Gini
impurity and Information gain. Decision tree are
simple to understand and interpret. It requires
little data preparation. It is able to handle both
numerical and categorical data. It uses a white
box model such that if a given situation is
observable in a model the explanation for the
condition is easily explained by boolean logic. It
is possible to validate a model using statistical
tests making it possible to account for the
reliability of the model. It is robust and performs
well with large data in a short time.
However, the problem of learning an optimal
decision tree is known to be NP-complete.
Consequently, practical decision-tree learning
algorithms are based on heuristic algorithms
such as the greedy algorithm where locally
optimal decisions are made at each node. Such
algorithms cannot guarantee to return the
globally optimal decision tree similar to ANN.
Also, decision-tree learners create over-complex
trees that do not generalize the data well referred
to as overfitting requiring the use of additional
mechanisms such as pruning to avoid this
problem, thus increasing the complexity of
implementation. Similar to the traditional ANN
during its inception, decision trees have some
concepts that are hard to learn because they
cannot be expressed them easily, such as XOR,
parity or multiplexer problems. In such cases,
the decision tree becomes prohibitively large.
X H
1
1
K
X H
2 2
P
O
X H
3 3
DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1190/segam2014-0021.1
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 estimate and model other properties which
usually derived from empirical equations.
Training for Permeability Prediction using Decition Trees
3.5
CC = 0.96
3

2.5

Actual
1.5

0.5

-0.5
-0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5
Predicted

Training for Permeability Prediction using Extreme Learning Machine

3.5
CC = 0.99
3

2.5

Actual 1.5

Results and Discussion 1

Different neural network algorithms proposed in 0.5

this study were able to predict permeability from 0

porosity, specific surface area and irreducible -0.5

-0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5
water saturation. The agreement between Predicted
measured data and the network predictions Testing for Permeability Prediction using Extreme Learning Machine
4
demonstrate a successful implementation and CC = 0.96
validation of the algorithm’s ability to map the 3.5

complex nonlinear relationship between the 3

inputs and the output. 2.5

2
Actual

The results show the high performance of ELM 1.5

and DT compared to BPANN’s, with correlation 1

coefficient of 99.3874 % in training process and 0.5

96.0688 % in the testing process for ELM. For 0
DT algorithm, the correlation coefficient in -0.5
about 96.4580 % in the training phase and -1
94.0747 % in the testing phase. In term of root 0 0.5 1 1.5
Predicted
2 2.5 3 3.5

mean square error and computing time , ELM

shows the highest performance again with
RMSE = 0.10, CT ( computing time) = 0.046 in
the training and RMSE = 0.36, CT = 0.005 in
the testing process. For DT , the training process
gave RMSE = 0.24, CT= 0.10 and RMSE =
0.44, CT = 0.01.

The performance for these two neural networks

to predict reservoir properties can be used to

© 2014 SEG DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1190/segam2014-0021.1

SEG Denver 2014 Annual Meeting Page 2711
 Training for Permeability Prediction using Decition Trees
3.5
Actual
3 Predicted

2.5
Permeability (log)

2
Comparison of DT, ELM and
1.5
ANN
1

0.5
1
0
0.9
-0.5
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
Training Data 0.8
Testing for Permeability Prediction using Decition Trees
3.5 0.7
Actual
3 Predicted
0.6

CC
2.5
0.5
Permeability (log)

2
0.4
1.5
0.3
1
0.2
0.5

0.1
0

-0.5
0
0 2 4 6 8 10
Testing Data
12 14 16 18 20
8 neurons
10 neurons
12 neurons
14 neurons
DT ELM ANN
Testing for Permeability Prediction using Decition Trees
3.5
CC = 0.94
3

2.5

2
Actual

1.5

0.5

-0.5
-0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5
Predicted

© 2014 SEG DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1190/segam2014-0021.1

SEG Denver 2014 Annual Meeting Page 2712
 http://dx.doi.org/10.1190/segam2014-0021.1

EDITED REFERENCES
Note: This reference list is a copy-edited version of the reference list submitted by the author. Reference lists for the 2014
SEG Technical Program Expanded Abstracts have been copy edited so that references provided with the online metadata for
each paper will achieve a high degree of linking to cited sources that appear on the Web.

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© 2014 SEG DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1190/segam2014-0021.1

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