Integration of Self Organizing Map and Date Driven Methods to Predict Oil Formation Volume Factor: North Africa Crude Oil Examples

Abstract In this paper we introduce for the first time an innovative approach for deriving Oil Formation Volume Factor (Bo) by mean of artificial intelligence method. In a new proposed application Self-Organizing Map (SOM) technology has been merged with statistical prediction methods integrating in a single step dimensionality reduction, extraction of input data structure pattern and prediction of formation volume factor Bo. The SOM neural network method applies an unsupervised training algorithm combined with back propagation neural network BPNN to subdivide the entire set of PVT input into different patterns identifying a set of data that have something in common and run individual MLFF ANN models for each specific PVT cluster and computing Bo. PVT data for more than two hundred oil samples (total of 804 data points) were collected from the north African region representing different basin and covering a greater geographical area were used in this study. To establish clear Bound on the accuracy of Bo determination several statistical parameters and terminology included in the presentation of the result from SOM-Neural Network solution. the main outcome is the reduction of error obtained by the new proposed competitive Learning Structure integration of SOM and MLFF ANN to less than 1 % compared to other method. however also investigated in this work five independents means of model driven and data driven approach for estimating Bo theses are 1) Optimal Transformations for Multiple Regression as introduced by (McCain, 1998) using alternating conditional expectations (ACE) for selecting multiple regression transformations 2), Genetic programing and heuristic modeling using Symbolic Regression (SR) and cross validation for model automatic tuning 3) Machine learning predictive model (Nearest Neighbor Regression, Kernel Ridge regression, Gaussian Process Regression (GPR), Random Forest Regression (RF), Support Vector Regression (SVM), Decision Tree Regression (DT), Gradient Boosting Machine Regression (GBM), Group modeling data handling (GMDH). Regression Model Accuracy Metrics (Average absolute relative error, R-square), diagnostic plot was used to address the more adequate techniques and model for predicting Bo.