Application of artificial intelligence to reservoir characterization: An interdisciplinary approach. January 1, 1996--March 31, 1996

The basis of this research is to apply novel techniques from artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems in capturing, integrating and articulating key knowledge from geology, geostatistics, and petroleum engineering to develop accurate descriptions of petroleum reservoirs. The ultimate goal is to design and implement a single powerful expert system for use by small producers and independents to efficiently exploit reservoirs. The main challenge of the proposed research is to automate the generation of detailed reservoir descriptions honoring all the available ``software`` and ``hardware`` data that ranges from qualitative and semi-quantitative geological interpretations to numeric data obtained from cores, well tests, well logs and production statistics. In this sense, the proposed research project is truly multidisciplinary. It involves significant amount of information exchange between researchers in geology, geostatistics, and petroleum engineering. Computer science (and artificial intelligence) provides the means to effectively acquire, integrate and automate the key expertise in the various disciplines in a reservoir characterization expert system. Additional challenges are the verification and validation of the expert system, since much of the interpretation of the experts is based on extended experience in reservoir characterization. Accomplishments to date are discussed