Model Regeneration Scheme Using a Deep Learning Algorithm for Reliable Uncertainty Quantification of Channel Reservoirs

Reservoir characterization is one of the essential procedures for decision makings. However, conventional inversion methods of history matching have several inevitable issues of losing geological information and poor performances, when it is applied to channel reservoirs. Therefore, we propose a model regeneration scheme for reliable uncertainty quantification of channel reservoirs without conventional model inversion methods. The proposed method consists of three parts: feature extraction, model selection, and model generation. In the feature extraction part, drainage area localization and discrete cosine transform are adopted for channel feature extraction in near-wellbore area. In the model selection part, K-means clustering and an ensemble ranking method are utilized to select models that have similar characteristics to a true reservoir. In the last part, deep convolutional generative adversarial networks (DCGAN) and transfer learning are applied to generate new models similar to the selected models. After the generation, we repeat the model selection process to select final models from the selected and the generated models. We utilize these final models to quantify uncertainty of a channel reservoir by predicting their future productions. After applying the proposed scheme to three different channel fields, it provides reliable models for production forecasts with reduced uncertainty. The analyses show that the scheme can effectively characterize channel features and increase a probability of existence of models similar to a true model.