Integration of electromagnetic, resistivity-based, and production logging data for validating lithofacies and permeability predictive models with tree ensemble algorithms in heterogeneous carbonate reservoirs

This study develops an innovative workflow to identify discrete lithofacies distributions with respect to the well-log records exploiting two tree-based ensemble learning algorithms: extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) and adaptive boosting (AdaBoost). In the next step, the predicted discrete lithofacies distribution is further assessed with well-log data using an XGBoost regression to predict reservoir permeability. The input well logging records are gamma ray, neutron porosity, bulk density, compressional slowness and deep and shallow resistivity. These data originate in a carbonate reservoir at the Mishrif basin of southern Iraq's oil field. To achieve solid prediction of lithofacies permeability, random subsampling cross-validation was applied to the originated dataset to formulate two subsets, training for model tuning and testing for prediction of subsets that are not observed during model training. The values of total correct percentage (TCP) of lithofacies predictions for the entire dataset and testing subset were 98% and 93% by the XGBoost algorithm; and 97% and 89% using the AdaBoost classifier, respectively. The XGBoost predictive models led to attain the least uncertain lithofacies and permeability records of the cored data. For further validation, the predicted lithofacies and reservoir permeability were then compared with the porosity-permeability values derived from the Nuclear-Magnetic Resonance (NMR) log, the secondary porosity of the Full-bore Micro Imager (FMI) and the production contribution from the Production-Logging Tool (PLT). Therefore, it is believed that the XGBoost model is capable of making accurate predictions of lithofacies and permeability for the same well's non-cored intervals and other non-cored wells in the investigated reservoir.