Automatic interpretation of cement evaluation logs from cased boreholes using supervised deep neural networks

Abstract

The integrity of cement in cased boreholes is typically evaluated using well logging. However, well logging results are complex and can be ambiguous, and decisions associated with significant risks may be taken based on their interpretation. Cement evaluation logs must therefore be interpreted by trained professionals. To aid these interpreters, we propose a system for automatically interpreting cement evaluation logs, which they can use as a basis for their own interpretation. This system is based on deep convolutional neural networks, which we train in a supervised manner using a dataset of around 60 km of interpreted well log data. Thus, the networks learn the connections between data and interpretations during training. More specifically, the task of the networks is to classify the bond quality (among 6 ordinal classes) and the hydraulic isolation (2 classes) in each 1m depth segment of each well based on the surrounding 13 m of well log data. We quantify the networks' performance by comparing over all segments how well the networks' interpretations of unseen data match the reference interpretations. For bond quality, the networks’ interpretation exactly matches the reference 51.6% of the time and is off by no more than one class 88.5% of the time. For hydraulic isolation, the interpretations match the reference 86.7% of the time. For comparison, a random-guess baseline gives matches of 16.7%, 44.4%, and 50%, respectively. We also compare with how well human reinterpretations of the log data match the reference interpretations, finding that the networks match the reference somewhat better. This may be linked to the networks learning and sharing the biases of the team behind the reference interpretations. An analysis of the results indicates that the subjectivity inherent in the interpretation process (and thereby in the reference interpretations we used for training and testing) is the main reason why we were not able to achieve an even better match between the networks and the reference.