History matching of petroleum reservoirs using deep neural networks

Abstract

• This paper proposes an approach based on ES-MDA coupled with ConvBiGRU-VAE. • ConvBiGRU-VAE is used to generate uncertain parameters. • The proposed approach is validated on PUNQ-S3 and Volve reservoir models. • ConvBiGRU-VAE gave overall enhanced performance in terms of production prediction. This paper proposes a novel approach based on deep learning to improve oil reservoirs' history matching problem. Deep autoencoders are widely used to solve the oil industry problems. However, as the input data increases, the autoencoder parameters increase exponentially. Our model is based on a convolutional variational autoencoder using AlexNet and bi-directional gated recurrent units. It parameterizes large-scale oilfield reservoirs. The proposed model is integrated into an ensemble smoother with multiple data assimilation to perform history matching. The proposed approach is validated on two reservoir models: PUNQ-S3 and Volve field. The root mean squared error, R 2 , and mean absolute error are calculated to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The results show that the proposed model can effectively study the complex geological features of oil fields and be used in expert systems for reservoir modeling.