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Research Paper

Geosystem Engineering, 14(4), 157-164 (December 2011)

Selection and Evaluation of Enhanced Oil Recovery Method


Using Artificial Neural Network
1

Jong-Yong Lee , Hyo-Jin Shin and Jong-Se Lim


1

2,*

Korea National Oil Corporation, Dongan-Gu, Anyang, Gyeonggi-Do, Korea


2
Korea Maritime University, Dongsam-Dong, Yeongdo-Gu, Busan, Korea

INTRODUCTION

ABSTRACT: Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) has gained great


attention as a result of higher oil prices and increasing oil
demands. Extensive researches have been conducted to develop
various EOR methods, evaluate their applicability and optimize
operation conditions. One of the principal areas is to develop
an effective tool for selection of a suitable EOR method according to oil field characteristics. The main objective of the studies
is to screen various EOR methods based on field characteristics
and evaluate their technical/economic applicability in an efficient way instead of predicting the field performances of all possible competing strategies and comparing their economics. In this
paper, we present an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) approach to enable the petroleum engineer to select an appropriate EOR method with the given reservoir properties. The
ANN developed in this study is a four-layered feed-forward
Back Propagation (BP) network consisting of one input and
output layer with two hidden layers. The input layer is composed
of the key reservoir parameters (reservoir depth, temperature,
porosity, permeability, initial oil saturation, oil gravity, and
in-situ oil viscosity) while the output layer is composed of the
five EOR methods to be evaluated (steam, CO2 miscible, hydrocarbon miscible, in-situ combustion, polymer flooding). The
number of hidden layers and neurons are optimized during the
training by repeated trial and error. After trained successfully,
the ANN is tested and applied to other fields which are not used
for the training. The noise test is also conducted to evaluate applicability of the model against the error included in the input.
A series of the test results show that the ANN developed in this
study can be used to select the most appropriate EOR process
according to reservoir rock and fluid characteristics in a time
and cost effective way.

Higher oil prices and concerns about future oil supply are
leading to increased interest in Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR)
around the world. Because EOR projects are generally more
expensive and involve higher front end costs than conventional
secondary projects, effective planning takes on added importance
(Hite et al., 2004). A large number of studies have been conducted
to help the petroleum engineer select efficient EOR methods
with limited field information. The main objective of the studies
is to select the suitable EOR method in an effective way without
predicting the reservoir performance of all possible competing
strategies and comparing their economics.
Most of early studies in the EOR selection were to establish
the technical screening criteria of each EOR method (Taber and
Martin, 1983; Goodlett et al., 1986; Taber et al., 1996a; Taber et
al., 1996b). Based on laboratory experiments and field experiences, the applicable ranges of the reservoir rock and fluid
properties were presented in these studies. The effort has been
added in several studies to update the applicable ranges with
the current technical and economic conditions (Aladasani and
Bai, 2010; Dickson and Wylie, 2010). The problem of selection
and implementation of proper EOR techniques was also
addressed in some papers as a guide for petroleum engineers
(Zerafat et al., 2011).
The improvement of computer technology introduced the
artificial intelligence technique into EOR selection (Guerillot,
1988; Elemo and Elmtalab, 1993; Surguchev and Li, 2000;
Shokir et al., 2002; Lee and Lim, 2008). Because the values of
these models strongly depend on the accuracy of the input data,
it should be continuously updated with up-to-date operation data.
In this paper, we developed the Artificial Neural Network
(ANN) incorporating the recent database published in the
industry. The main goal of the study is to develop the ANN
model that can estimate the best EOR method according to the
given reservoir rock and fluid properties in a time and cost effective way and evaluate applicability of the model.

Key words: Enhanced Oil Recovery, Artificial Neural Network,


field characteristics, selection, data preparation

Recieved May 15; Revised October 5, 2011;


Accepted October 6, 2011
* Corresponding Author: Jong-Se Lim
E-mail: jslim@hhu.ac.kr
Address: Korea Maritime University, Dongsam-Dong, YeongdoGu, Busan, 606-791, Korea

ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORK


ANN is an information-processing system that has certain

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Jong-Yong Lee et al.

performance characteristics in common with biological neural


networks. A typical neural network is a multilayered system
consisting of single input layer, single or double hidden layer,
and single output layer. Each layer is composed of basic processing elements called neurons. Each neuron is connected to
the neurons of the adjacent layer with the connection weights
between 0 and 1. The signals between the neurons are multiplied
by the associated connection weights and added up together as
Eq. (1), and then used as the net input of the neuron.
NET = nk =1 I kW k

(1)

Where NET is the net input of the neuron, I is the input variable,
W is the connection weight, k is the index, and n is the number
of input variables. Each neuron applies an activation function
to its net input to determine its output signal and the signal is
transmitted to the next neuron. The sigmoid function in Eq. (2)
is a activation function commonly used.
f ( NET ) =

1
1 + e NET

Fig. 1. Reservoir depth vs. area of producing EOR projects.

(2)
2

The connection weights between the neurons are adjusted


during the training. There are two ways of the training; supervised
and unsupervised. For most typical neural network, the connection
weights are adjusted by the given input and corresponding
output. This process is called as supervised training. One of the
widely used supervised networks is the feed-forward Back
Propagation (BP) network which adjusts the connection weights
during the back propagation process.
In this study, the BP network with the training algorithm of
Scaled Conjugate Gradient (SCG) which is a new variation of
the conjugate gradient method is used. SCG allows the avoidance
of the line search per training iteration of Levenberg-Marquardt
approach in order to scale the step size.

DATA SOURCE AND PREPARATION

Fig. 2. Reservoir depth vs. temperature of producing EOR projects.

The data used for training and testing the networks are extracted from the special reports, Worldwide EOR Survey published by Oil and Gas Journal (Moritis, 2006; 2008; 2010). The
reports include the field name, reservoir rock and fluid properties,
project maturity, and project evaluation of the field where the
EOR was being applied. In this study, the data of the fields where
the application of EOR was evaluated to be successful (success
and promising) are only used for the training to extract the characteristics of the successful EOR projects. The EOR methods
which were applied to less than 10 fields are also excluded in
the training for training efficiency.
Neurons of the input layer are designed to be the main reservoir properties. 2-dimensional scatter plots are drawn to screen
the input reservoir properties that affect the choice of EOR
method. Fig. 1 to Fig. 6 are the scatter plots to analyze the effects

of reservoir rock and fluid properties on the applied EOR


methods. It is found that the applied EOR methods tend to be
categorized by most of the reservoir rock and fluid properties
analyzed except the reservoir area (Fig. 1). Accordingly, the
seven reservoir properties which are reservoir depth, temperature, porosity, log permeability, initial oil saturation, oil gravity, log oil viscosity are selected as the input variables of the
ANN model.
A new variable is generated by grouping the input reservoir parameters to sample the data to be used for the training and
two-thirds of the total data are selected based on this group variable
as summarized in Table 1. For training efficiency, the sampling
ratio increases to three-fourths if the number of sampling data is
less than ten. The remaining data which are not included in the

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Selection and Evaluation of Enhanced Oil Recovery Method Using Artificial Neural Network

Fig. 3. Oil saturation vs. porosity of producing EOR projects.

Fig. 5. Reservoir depth vs. oil gravity of producing EOR projects.

2
2

Fig. 4. Reservoir permeability vs. porosity of producing EOR projects.

Fig. 6. Oil viscosity vs. oil gravity of producing EOR projects.

training are used for testing the developed ANN model. Table 2
shows the number of data for the training and the applicability test.
The ranges of the input reservoir parameters are summarized
in Table 3. Each input variable is normalized between 0 and 1
before the training for numerical stability as defined in Eq. (3).
The normalized input variables are then entered into the input
neurons to train the network.

variable and Xmax is the maximum value of the variable. The ranges
of the input reservoir parameters are summarized in Table 3.
The neurons of the output layer are composed of the EOR
methods to be selected. The five EOR methods (steam, carbon
dioxide miscible, hydrocarbon miscible, in-situ combustion,
polymer flooding) which are being applied in more than ten
fields consist the output layer. The target value of the output neurons are designed to be +1 in the neurons indicating the successfully applied EOR methods and -1 in other neurons indicating
other EOR methods.

X norm =

X actual X min
X max X min

(3)

Where Xnorm is the normalized input variable, Xactual is the


original value of the variable, Xmin is the minimum value of the

DEVELOPMENT OF ANN MODEL


Design and training of the ANN is conducted in Matlab

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Jong-Yong Lee et al.

Table 1. Data sampling method by group variable


STEP 1

Divide the input variables into two groups by their effects on the selection
Group 1 : porosity, log permeability, oil saturation, log oil viscosity
Group 2 : depth, temperature, oil gravity

STEP 2

Multiply the variables for each group


V1 = porosity log permeability oil saturation log oil viscosity
V2 = depth temperature oil gravity

STEP 3

Generate the group variable by dividing V1 by V2

STEP 4

Rank each data by group variable and group each three data

STEP 5

Sample two data for each group

Table 2. The number of data used for the training and the applicability
test
EOR type
Steam
Carbon dioxide miscible
Hydrocarbon miscible
In-situ combustion
Polymer flooding
Total

Total
103
65
32
15
15
230

Training
70
45
22
11
11
159

Testing
33
20
10
4
4
71

Table 3. Ranges of the input reservoir parameters


Reservoir parameters
Minimum Average Maximum
Reservoir depth, ft
200.0
4,079.0 13,750.0
Reservoir temperature,
45.0
126.9
290.0
Porosity, %
3.0
23.3
65.0
Permeability, md
0.1
1,283.6
11,500.0
Initial oil saturation, % of OOIP
26.5
62.8
98.0
Oil gravity, API
8.0
24.9
57.0
In-situ oil viscosity, cp
0.1
26,594.4 200,000.0
Fig. 7. Sensitivity on the number of neurons of the hidden layers.

7.12.0 (Beale et al., 2010). The object function in the training


is the mean square error as defined in Eq. (4) and the convergence
tolerance is initially designed to be 0.001.
Error =

1 N
i=1 ( yi f ( xi ) )
Np
p

(4)

Where Np, yi, and f(xi) indicate the number of data, the measured output, and estimated output by the model respectively.
As an activation function, the tangent sigmoid function is used
for the first hidden layer and the logistic sigmoid function is used
for the second hidden layer. For the output layer, the linear function is used (Lee and Lim, 2008).
The structure of the ANN model, that is the number of neurons
of the hidden layers, is optimized during the training by repeated
trial and error. The number of iterations per each training case
is compared in Fig. 7. Maximum number of iteration is set to
10,000. As shown, the network can reach the given convergence
tolerance when the number of neurons in both of the hidden lay-

ers are greater than 8. Among the networks evaluated, the one
consisting of 10 neurons in the first hidden layer and 8 neurons
in the second hidden layer is selected as the work basis. The finally selected structure of the ANN model is shown in Fig. 8.
Applicability of the ANN model is tested against the new data
which are not used for the training. A number of convergence
tolerances are tested with the model during the training to avoid
the over- or under-training. The test results indicate that the
ANN model show good performance with the all given convergence tolerances (Table 4). The best performance is shown
in the model trained by 0.0001 which is eventually selected as
the final model. The prediction performance of this model is
summarized in detail in Table 5.

APPLICATIONS
After the ANN model was trained and tested successfully,
the noise test is conducted to evaluate the model applicability

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Selection and Evaluation of Enhanced Oil Recovery Method Using Artificial Neural Network
Table 4. Prediction performance of the ANN model according to the convergence tolerance
Convergence
tolerance
Total
Succeed
Failed

0.001
No. of data set
71
66
5

%
100
93
7

0.0001
No. of data set
71
69
2

%
100
97.2
2.8

0.00001
No. of data set
71
68
3

%
100
95.8
4.2

0.000001
No. of data set
%
71
100
66
93
5
7

Table 5. Detailed prediction performance of the developed ANN model


EOR type
Steam
Carbon dioxide miscible
Hydrocarbon miscible
In-situ combustion
Polymer flooding
Total

Succeed
No. of data set
33
19
10
3
4
69

Failed
No. of data set
0
1
0
1
0
2

%
100
95
100
75
100
97.2

%
0
5
0
25
0
2.8

Total
No. of data set
33
20
10
4
4
71

Table 6. Oil viscosity vs. oil gravity of producing EOR projects


Field

Cold Lake[1]

WasonDenver[1]

Location
Canada
TX, USA
Operator
Imperial Oil
Occidental
Formation type
Unconsolidated Sandstone
Dolomite
Depth, ft
1,509
5,200
Temperature, F
55
105
Porosity, %
Unknown
Unknown
Permeability, md
1,500
8
Oil saturation, %
70
51
API gravity
10.2
33
Oil viscosity, cp
10,000
1.2
Method
Steam (CSS)
CO2 miscible
* Data source
[1] Lee and Lim, 2008; [2] Chung and Carroll, 1995; [3] Trujillo et al., 2010

against the error that may be included in the input data. A certain
amount of noise is given to input data and accuracy of the estimation is measured with increasing error up to 30%. As shown in
Fig. 9, the result shows that the ANN model can estimate the
successfully applied EOR method with accuracy of 80% even
though the input reservoir properties contain 30% of noise.
Finally, the developed model is applied to several worldwide successful EOR projects - Cold Lake, Wason Denver,
Twofredsand Cocorn fields. The reservoir characteristics of
each field are summarized in Table 6. In this paper, one of the reservoir properties per each field is assumed to be unknown property
to consider the uncertainty that we may be included at the initial
project stage.
Cold Lake
Cold Lake is one of the largest oil sand fields located in Alberta,
Canada. To produce these huge amounts of bitumen, the CSS
(Cyclic Steam Stimulation) is applied. Porosity is assumed to be

Twofreds[2]

Cocorn[3]

TX, USA
HNG Fossil Fuel Company
Sandstone
4,820
104
20.3
33.4
Unknown
36.4
1.467
CO2 miscible

Colombia
Ecopetrol S.A.
Sandstone
2,500
109
20-30
1,080
64
13.1
Unknown
Steam

unknown for this field. Within a typical porosity range, 10 to 50%,


the model selected the steam as the best EOR method for this field.
Wason Denver
Wason Denver is located in Texas, U.S.A. The oil is being
produced by the carbon dioxide flooding for this field due to
relatively deep reservoir depth and light oil compositions.
Porosity is assumed to be unknown parameter as same as Cold
Lake field. Within the given range of porosity, the model selected the carbon dioxide miscible flooding as the best EOR
method.
Twofreds
Twofreds is located in west Texas, U.S.A. The carbon dioxide
operations for the east side of the field were initiated in February
1974 after the field was nearing its waterflood economic limit.
As a result of CO2 operations, oil production increased from 170
bopd to over a 1,000 bopd (Flanders and DePauw, 1993). For

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Jong-Yong Lee et al.

Fig. 8. Structure of the ANN model developed in this study.


100

injection through the staged EOR screening methodology consisting of binary technical screening, analogies, benchmarking,
and analytical predictions. The oil viscosity is 722 cp, but
it is assumed as unknown property in this study. The ANN
predicted that steam flooding is the most favorable in the field
when the oil viscosity is greater than 100 cp.

% of accuracy

80

60

CONCLUSIONS
40

20

0
0

10

15

20

25

30

% of noise

Fig. 9. Accuracy performance of the noise test.

this field oil saturation is assumed as unknown parameter while


the actual oil saturation in the field is 57%. Within a tested range
of oil saturation, 30 to 80%, the ANN predicted that carbon dioxide flooding is the best EOR method.
Cocorn
Cocorn field, operated by Ecopetro S.A., is located in the
Middle of Magdalena Valley basin in Puerto Perales town,
Columbia. Trukillo et al.(2010) studied and concluded that the
field is a good candidate to implement continuous steam

1. A four-layered ANN model is developed to select the most


suitable EOR method based on the field characteristics. The input layer consists of the seven reservoir parameters and the output layer consists of the five EOR methods to be selected. The
number of neurons in the hidden layers is optimized during the
training; ten for the first hidden layer and eight for the second
hidden layer.
2. After trained successfully with the successful EOR field
data, the ANN model is tested against the data excluded in the
training. The model correctly selected the best EOR method
with the accuracy greater than 95%.
3. The noise test is performed to examine whether the ANN
model overcomes the error included in the input data. The result
showed that the model predicted the successful EOR method
with the accuracy greater than 80% with up to 30% error included in the input data.
4. Finally, the ANN is applied to the worldwide successful
EOR fields. The model selected the applied EOR methods as
the best method even one of reservoir parameters was assumed
as unknown.
5. A series of the tests results showed that the ANN model

Selection and Evaluation of Enhanced Oil Recovery Method Using Artificial Neural Network

developed in this study can be used to select the most appropriate EOR process with the limited data in a very short time
and cost effective way.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work was supported by the Energy Efficiency & Resources
of the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and
Planning (KETEP) grant funded by the Ministry of Knowledge
Economy, Republic of Korea (No. 2010201030001A).

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Jong-Yong Lee et al.

Jong-Yong Lee is a reservoir engineer of Global Technology &


Research Center, Korea National Oil Corporation. He holds BS and
MS degrees in Energy & Resources Engineering from Korea Maritime
University. (E-mail: jylee@knoc.co.kr)

Jong-Se Lim is a professor of the Department of Energy& Resources


Engineering at Korea Maritime University. He holds BS, MS and Ph. D
degrees in Petroleum Engineering from Seoul National University.
(E-mail: jslim@hhu.ac.kr)

Hyo-Jin Shin is a graduate student of the Department of Energy &


Resources Engineering at Korea Maritime University. She holds a BS
degree in Energy & Resources Engineering from Korea Maritime
University. (E-mail: hjshin@hhu.ac.kr)

Jong-Yong Lee

Hyo-Jin Shin

Jong-Se Lim

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