Predicting Permeability from Porosity Using Artificial
Neural Networks1
S. J. Rogers,2 H. C. Chen,3 D. C. Kopaska-Merkel,4 and J. H. Fang2
ABSTRACT
Permeability values in a borehole are predicted
by an artificial neural network from the porosity
values at the same depths. The network used in this
study employs an architecture called backpropaga-
tion that is good at making predictions. The tradi-
tional approach for permeability prediction is
regression analysis. In regression analysis, the rela-
tionship between porosity and permeability is
assumed to be known. In reality, the functional
form of this relationship, i.e., the model equation,
is unknown. In contrast, the neural-network
approach assumes no functional relationship.
Six wells from Big Escambia Creek (Jurassic
Smackover carbonate) field in southern Alabama
were used to test predicting permeability from
porosity using a neural network. Porosity and spa-
tial data alone were used to predict permeability
because these data are readily available from any
hydrocarbon field. Three scenarios were per-
formed; in each one, a subset of the six wells was
used for a training set, one well for calibration, and
one or two wells were used for prediction. For
each scenario, simple linear regression was also
used to predict permeability from porosity. The
neural net predicted permeability much better than
did regression in one scenario; in the other two
scenarios the two methods performed equally well.
The neural net predicted permeability accurately
©Copyright 1995. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists. All
rights reserved.
1Manuscript received August 15, 1994; revised manuscript received May
9, 1995; final acceptance July 28, 1995.
2Department of Geology, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama
35487.
3Department of Computer Science, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa,
Alabama 35487.
4 Geological Survey of Alabama, P.O. Box O, Tuscaloosa, Alabama
35486.
We thank J. M. Weiner, John H. Doveton, P. H. Nelson, and Kevin T.
Biddle for reviewing an earlier version of this paper. The result was materially
improved by their comments. Texaco owns a patent on predicting
permeability from wireline logs using neural networks (J. M. Weiner, 1994,
personal communication).
Porosity and permeability data of 31 wells are available on diskette in
DOS or Macintosh format (Excel saved in .txt format). Cost is $4.00 for North
America and $5.00 outside North America. Contact AAPG Publications
Manager, P.O. Box 979, Tulsa, Oklahoma 74101-0979.
1786
using minimal data, but other kinds of information
(e.g., log- or core-derived lithologic information)
are easily incorporated if available. In addition,
compartmentalization of carbonate reservoirs may
be recognizable by this approach.
INTRODUCTION
Permeability is a cr itical variable for both
petroleum geology and petroleum engineering.
However, measuring permeability, directly or indi-
rectly, is a difficult and expensive undertaking.
Over the years, numerous methods and approaches
have been proposed to predict permeability values
using less expensive and easily obtainable data.
Regression analysis is perhaps the most commonly
and widely used technique (Wendt et al., 1986;
Block, 1991; among others). Nelson (1994) recent-
ly reviewed porosity-permeability relationships in
sedimentary rocks, but no mention was made of
the neural-network approach, although artificial
neural networks were used in permeability predic-
tion by Weiner et al. (1991) and Osborne (1992).
Predicting permeability and other variables is now
an area of active research.
Regression analysis is popular because it is sim-
ple to use and commercial statistical software pack-
ages include regression modules. However, regres-
sion analysis predicts mean values, and thus
overestimates lower values and underestimates
higher values. In contrast, the ANN (artificial neural
network) approach does not force predicted values
to lie near the mean values, thus preserving the
actual variability. Also, ANN uses depth information
by employing input windows encompassing multi-
ple input sampling points. This is impor tant
because regression analysis is not able to use depth
information in this way.
In view of the inadequacy of traditional methods
of predicting permeability and growing interest in
ANN as a predictive tool, we tested one ANN’s abil-
ity to predict permeability from porosity. We chose
an architecture known as backpropagation because
it is well suited to prediction problems (discussed
more fully in a following section). Also, we used
AAPG Bulletin, V. 79, No. 12 (December 1995), P. 1786–1797.
 Rogers et al. 1787

Little Escambia Creek and Chunchula fields, have

similar reservoir characteristics and are found in
the same or in a nearby trend. Also, sufficient core-
derived porosity and permeability data are available
APPR
from BEC field to evaluate results of porosity-to-per-
ORMATION
O F SMACKOVER F
XI
M
AT
E U P D IP
LIM
IT O meability prediction. Details of the petrophysical
characteristics of the Smackover are given in sever-
N
eastern
400
al recent papers (Kopaska-Merkel, 1993; Kopaska-
20 100
Miss. interior
0 Merkel and Hall, 1993; Kopaska-Merkel et al.,
salt basin
500 300
1994).
400
300 Manila embayment
200

200 GEOLOGIC SETTING

400 100
The Upper Jurassic Smackover Formation forms
300
an arcuate belt in the subsurface from southern
200
300
Big Escambia Creek Field
Texas to western Florida. Big Escambia Creek field
(Figures 1, 2) is located in the Conecuh embay-
y m ent ment, which also contains the giant Jay field. The
a
emb
o n ecuh diagenesis of the Smackover in this area was domi-
C
0
100
nated by the effects of several episodes of dolomiti-
200
zation and calcium-carbonate dissolution. Dolomite
300 is responsible for formation or preservation of
400
500 many permeable Smackover pore systems. Strata
assigned to the Smackover Formation in the Big
0 10 20 30 40 50 MILES Escambia Creek field area were deposited in a low-
to medium-energy protected shelf setting.
EXPLANATION 0 10 20 30 40 50 KILOMETERS
The formation in this area is characterized by
THICK SMACKOVER
microbial laminite, oncoid-pellet packstone, and
100 THICKNESS OF SMACKOVER FM coated fossil packstone in the lower Smackover;
IN FEET
fossiliferous mudstone and laminated mudstone in
C.I. 100 FEET
N
the middle Smackover; and pellet wackestone/
mudstone and oolitic grainstone in the upper
Smackover, which contains the reservoir in most
Smackover fields (Bradford, 1984) (Figure 3).
Upper Smackover strata in Big Escambia Creek field
Figure 1—Location map for Big Escambia Creek field. are arranged in shoaling-upward cycles as is charac-
Inset shows location of southern Alabama within the
United States.
teristic of the Smackover throughout southwestern
Alabama. The trap at Big Escambia Creek field is
formed from an element of the regional peripheral
only porosity and spatial information to predict per- fault system, modified by diagenetic permeability
meability because our goal was to develop a tool that barriers created by the interaction of depositional
could be used to predict permeability even where facies distribution, calcium-carbonate dissolution,
information is scanty. The purpose of this paper is to and dolomitization (Bradford, 1984; Vinet, 1984).
describe and evaluate the results of this test. In terms of original rock fabric, reservoir rock in
The test data come from the Smackover Big Escambia Creek field is dominated by dolomi-
Formation in Big Escambia Creek (BEC) field, tized oolitic grainstone and spatially associated
Escambia County, Alabama. Porosity and permeabil- dolomitized lime mudstone (Bradford, 1984). In
ity data from six cores of the Smackover Formation terms of existing rock fabric, reservoir strata in Big
in this field were used. BEC field was chosen for Escambia Creek field are dominated by nonselec-
the case study for three reasons. This field is a can- tive idiotopic dolostone, which is an important rea-
didate for future advanced recover y projects son why we chose this field as a test case for ANN
because reserves are significant (cumulative gas- permeability prediction.
condensate production exceeds 43 million bbl and Petrophysical characteristics of nonselective
cumulative gas production exceeds 630 Gcf*). dolostone are decoupled from depositional facies,
Several other large Smackover fields, including there is substantial megascopic reservoir hetero-
geneity, and porosity is the strongest known corre-
*Gcf = billion cubic feet. late of permeability (Kopaska-Merkel et al., 1994).
1788 Predicting Permeability

R5E R6E
Type Log
25 30

R6E R7E R7E R8E

L/K/G

T T
-15

-15 36 35 36
,3 5

,300 35
-15

2 33 2
0
,37

N N
8

T L/K/G -15,339 -14,85 T

-14 0
1 2 1 6 5 4 -14,9,9
50
00
1
-15,00 1
N SWD -15,050
0 N
-15
,
-15 100
,15
-15 0
12 7 ,20 12 7
EXPLANATION 8 0 10
-15,2
50
-15,300
C.I. 50 feet; contours in feet L/K/G -15,313
below sea level -15,3 15
50 14 13 18
normal fault
-15
L/K/G lowest known gas ,25
0 20
19
N
0 1 2 MILES
dry hole
SCALE
gas-condensate well 30

study area

Figure 2—Structure map on top of Smackover Formation–Big Escambia Creek field, Escambia County, southern
Alabama. Note the type well near the western limit of the field.

The percentage of dolomite varies from 100% to
locally less than 10%. In some places where the
process of dolomitization did not go to completion,
it was strongly fabric selective. Nondolomitized
strata in Big Escambia Creek field are impermeable.
NEURAL-NETWORK APPROACH
A brief introduction to neural networks appeared
in Rogers et al. (1992), in which an ANN was used
to determine rock types from well logs. In the fol-
lowing sections, we give additional information rel-
evant to this paper.
Neural Networks
The human brain is composed of approximate-
ly 10 billion interconnected cells, called neurons,
whose interaction is responsible for the character-
istics attributed to intelligence. The brain is a bio-
logical neural network. ANNs are created within a
serial or parallel computer in an attempt to simu-
late the interactions among neurons in biological
neural networks. Like brains, ANNs consist of
numerous “neurons” or processing units and
interconnecting synapses that we can program for
computation. We can program ANNs to recognize
patterns, retrieve data associatively, filter noise
from experimental data, complete missing informa-
tion, and estimate sampled functions (when we do
not know the mathematical form of the functions).
In short, ANNs can be programmed to mimic
human characteristics, such as learning, generaliza-
tion, and interpretation, where traditional comput-
ing algorithms and statistical methods have been
inadequate (Hertz et al., 1991).
Backpropagation Neural Networks
One of the more popular architectures of ANNs
is the backpropagation neural network (BPNN).
BPNNs have proven to be successful in a variety of
applications and are ver y f lexible and easy to
implement. We used the BPNN because of these
attributes and because of its suitability to predic-
tion problems. BPNNs are suitable for prediction
problems where the input-output functions need
to be learned from experience. Thus, they are
model-free estimators.
BPNNs are good examples of supervised learn-
ing paradigms. In supervised learning, the network
learns from a training set consisting of input-output
pairs of vectors. An input vector is applied to the
network, and the output vector is used as a “teach-
er” to show the correct (or desired) output.

Figure 3—Type log for Big Escambia Creek field, Smith
25-7 No. 1 well, Alabama Oil and Gas Board Permit No.
4727. See Figure 2 for well location. Numbers on the left
of the lithology column indicate reservoir lithofacies
defined on the basis of mineralogy, rock fabric, and
pore types.
Learning is accomplished by adjusting the network
weights until the differences between the actual
and desired output are acceptably low. BPNNs
(Figure 4) are feed-forward networks because
inputs from a training set are fed into the network
Rogers et al. 1789
through the input layer and values propagate for-
ward through the network’s hidden layers (one hid-
den layer was used in this study) until they reach
the output layer. Each connection between nodes
of the network has a weight value, which dictates
how the values propagate through the network.
The network learns by adjusting these weight val-
ues so that it responds correctly to inputs for the
problem the network is to learn. The process of
adjusting the weight values is known as training
and is performed by taking the error produced by
the network for a given input and propagating this
error backward through the layers to adjust the
weights; this process gives the backpropagation
neural network its name. Before training begins,
the weights are initialized to random values. The
training process repeatedly presents the training
set input patterns to the network, compares the
network’s results to the desired outputs, and
updates the weight values to produce better out-
puts. Training can be a lengthy process, and there
is no guarantee that the network will ever reach a
state in which all inputs produce the desired out-
puts. However, the network will usually produce
outputs within some error tolerance (see Rogers et
al., 1992, for more details).
BPNNs are good at generalization. After a BPNN
is adequately trained, it learns to identify the signif-
icant features and to ignore irrelevant data in the
input. Thus, it can produce the correct output
despite differences between training data and test
data (Wasserman, 1993).
We do not discuss some topics related to BPNNs;
these topics include normalization of input, scaling
of output, the momentum problem, and the possi-
bility of the solution converging to a local mini-
mum. These topics are beyond the scope of this
paper. The interested reader should refer to
Wasserman (1989), Hecht-Nielsen (1990), or Zurada
(1992) for further information on these topics.
Neural Networks and Prediction
BPNNs are very good at prediction because they
can learn a problem from a relatively small set of
examples and their generalizing ability allows them
to make predictions on input data that were never
used in their training set. BPNNs can also deal with
incomplete or noisy data better than traditional
prediction methods.
To predict permeability from porosity, a training
set is compiled using porosity values as inputs and
their corresponding permeability values (known
from core analyses) as desired outputs. The cre-
ation of a training set for the permeability predic-
tion problem described by this paper is more com-
plex than simply pairing a porosity value from a
1790 Predicting Permeability
given depth with its corresponding permeability
value. If a one-to-one correspondence existed
between porosity and permeability, a simple
Figure 5—Schematic diagram showing how spatial
information, porosity, and permeability data were used
in training the network.
Figure 4—Architecture of
neural network used in this
paper.
lookup table could be created from a large number
of examples. Because this is not the case, a more
innovative approach is required. Instead of using
just one porosity value, a set of adjacent porosity
values are used to predict a single permeability
value. For this work, 25 porosity values, with 12
porosity values above and below the depth to be
predicted, as well as the porosity value at the
depth were used to predict the permeability
(Figure 5). Spatial information (geographic coordi-
nates and depth) was used as part of the input to
enhance the network’s ability to make predictions.
BPNNs can learn the significance of each input to
the predicted value so that inputs that do not influ-
ence the predicted value will not interfere with
the network’s performance. This is accomplished
by adjusting the weights of connections between
pairs of nodes during the training process, as
explained in the previous section.
The training sets described in this paper were
composed of training set porosity-permeability pairs
in the form illustrated in Figure 5. Figure 4 shows the
inputs and outputs as the BPNN sees them.
CASE STUDIES
Six cored wells from Big Escambia Creek field in
southern Alabama provided observed porosity and

permeability values in 1-ft intervals (Figure 6). These
wells were drilled in a part of the field that is litho-
logically homogeneous laterally (cf. Bradford, 1984;
Figure 7). Using the cored data in various combina-
tions, three scenarios were run to test the BPNN’s
predictive capability. These scenarios were based on
geological considerations. In each scenario, a subset
of the six wells was used for a training set (either
two, three, or four wells), one well was used to cali-
brate the network, and the remaining wells were
predicted. The training set used all of the observed
porosity and permeability values available, the X and
Y coordinates of the well’s position in the field, and
the depth (Z) of the observed permeability value.
The BPNN was trained for several thousand itera-
tions of the training set as follows. During the itera-
tive training process, the current network weights
periodically were checked using the calibration well
Rogers et al. 1791
Figure 6—Porosity-
permeability data for all
wells used in this study.
as if it were a test well. At some point, the mean
square error, which had been falling, began to rise.
The network weights that provided the best results
(lowest mean square error) on the calibration well
were used for the actual prediction of the test wells.
Minor reversals in the trend of the mean square error
were ignored to avoid choosing a local minimum as
the solution. The calibration well was never includ-
ed in the training sets or the testing sets so that a
true test of the network’s performance could be
measured. Note that the test wells are never used in
the training set or as a calibration well because this
would influence the results of the network training
and might cause the network to memorize rather
than generalize. Both permeability (from cores) and
porosity (either from cores or logs) are necessary in
the training process, but only porosity data are
needed to make predictions.
1792 Predicting Permeability
Figure 7—Comparison of depth vs. porosity and permeability in wells 1704 and 1705, indicating a strong similarity
between the Smackover sections in these two wells. Dashed line indicates correlation of strata between these two
wells.
In the first scenario, two wells (permits 1877
and 1928) were used for the training, and perme-
ability values were predicted in well 1930 using
the porosity values at the same depths. All three
wells lie approximately along strike from one
another, and this arrangement minimizes lateral
lithologic variation. Well 1802 was the calibration
well. Figure 8 is the location map of the wells and
Figure 9 gives the results of ANN prediction. The
predicted values from a linear regression analysis
are also shown. ANN yielded a much more accu-
rate prediction than the regression analysis (Figure 9;
Table 1).
In the second scenario, three wells were used
for training (wells 1802, 1877, and 1930) and the
calibration well was 1928. In this scenario, we pre-
dicted permeability in two different wells (1704
and 1705), which lie along strike with and between
the training wells. We expected this scenario to
perform at least as well as scenario one because the
distribution of training wells was designed to cap-
ture information about petrophysical variation in
the region surrounding the predicted wells. The
results are shown in Figures 10 and 11, respective-
ly. The BPNN predicted permeability slightly more
accurately than the regression model, but the dif-
ference is not significant (Table 1). Performance of
the network in this scenario was degraded by one
or more of at least two possible factors. The area
covered by the wells used in this scenario was
much greater than that for scenario one. Lateral
reservoir heterogeneity over these greater dis-
tances may have adversely influenced the network.
In addition, a boundary between two reservoir
compartments may lie within the larger prediction
area of scenario two. As mentioned in the section
on geologic setting, the Smackover Formation in
Big Escambia Creek field is characterized by rela-
tively high values of megascopic reservoir hetero-
geneity, which could be expressed in part as geo-
graphically distinct reservoir compartments.
The last scenario used four training wells (1802,
1877, 1928, and 1930), also used in the previous
two cases, and predicted permeability in one well
(1704; permeability also was predicted in this well
in scenario two). Well 1705 was used for calibra-
tion. Figure 8 shows the wells used and Figure 12
gives the results, indicating that the network per-
formed no better than the regression analysis. The
same factors affecting the results of scenario two
influenced this scenario because they differed only
by the addition of a fourth training well, which had
small effect on the distribution of data used to train
the network.
 Rogers et al. 1793

Figure 8—Location of wells

mentioned in this paper.

Porosity and permeability data for Big Escambia
Creek field are available on diskette from AAPG.
DISCUSSION
All of the case studies have a few features in
common that illustrate both the strengths and
weaknesses of the neural-network approach. The
neural network yielded more accurate predictions
than did linear regression (Figure 9; Table 1). Both
methods, however, are unsuccessful at predicting
very high permeability values that are surrounded
by substantially lower permeability values. The
neural network does a poor job in these situations
because of the averaging effect of the 25-point
“window.” However, in practical terms this short-
coming may not be severe for two reasons. First, a
1-ft-thick high-permeability streak may not consti-
tute a reservoir interval. If the high-permeability
streak is several feet thick, then the method does
a much better job of prediction (e.g., thicker per-
meable zones in Figures 9 and 10). Second,
although it is true that thin high-permeability
zones strongly inf luence the success of water-
flood operations, the neural network does predict
the stratigraphic location and thickness of such
zones. Intervals characterized by locally high- and
low-permeability values in the “real” data exhibit
the same relative relationships to their neighbors
in the predicted data (Figures 10–12). Another
implication of this result is the observation that an

Training: 1877,1928 (1802) Figure 9—Comparison of

Prediction: 1930 predicted permeability
35 values with those estimated
by regression method and
Observed those measured from the
30 Neural Network cores of well 1930 for
Regression
scenario one.
25
Permeability (md)

20

15

10

0
15453 –
–
–
–
15456 –
–
–
–
15459 –
–
–
–
15462 –
–
–
–
15465 –
–
–
–
15468 –
–
–
–
–
15471 –
–
–
–
15474 –
–
–
–
15477 –
–
–
–
15480 –
–
–
–
15483 –
–
–
–
15486 –
–
–
–
15489 –
–
–
–
15492 –
–
–
–
15495 –
–
–
–
15498 –
–
–
–
15501 –
–
–
–
15504 –
–
–
–
15507 –
–
–
–
15510 –
–
–
–
–
15513 –
–
–
–
15517 –
–
–
–
15520 –
–
–
–
15523 –
–
–
–
15526 –
–

Depth (ft)
1794 Predicting Permeability

Table 1. Mean Squared Error (in md) for BPNN and for
Linear Regression for the Three Scenarios*
Scenario
2 2
Method 1 (Well 1704) (Well 1705)
BPNN 20.540 0.05400
Regression 101.978 0.07185
Regression/
BPNN 4.964849 1.330555
*BPNN = Backpropagation neural network.
ANN is not used straight off the shelf. An ANN
ought to be designed for the problem at hand. In a
permeability-prediction study for evaluating a
proposed or actual waterf lood operation, for
instance, a narrow window should be used, or
other characteristics incorporated into the model,
such as recognition of the shape of the permeabil-
ity distribution vs. depth where permeability
changes dramatically over a short stratigraphic
interval. This could enhance prediction of thin
very high permeability zones.
Lithologic information was not used to predict
permeability for four reasons. First, and most
important, this project was specifically designed to
test a network that employed only spatial and
porosity information to predict permeability
3 because our goal was to develop a tool that could
0.08316 0.123035 be applied to any field, no matter how scanty the
0.10127 0.110998 available data. (However, the architecture of the
network used makes it very simple to add more
1.217773 0.902166
kinds of input data if they are available.) Second,
lithologic units in the Smackover Formation, identi-
fied on the basis of mineralogy, rock fabric, pore
types, and sedimentary structures, do differ consis-
tently in porosity and per meability values
(Kopaska-Merkel et al., 1994). However, individual
lithofacies tend to exhibit a wide range in perme-
ability values, coupled with low correlation coeffi-
cients for porosity and permeability within a single
lithofacies. Thus, lithologic information is a crude
predictor of permeability. Third, the effect of X–Y
variation in rock type on porosity and permeability
was minimized in this study by using a relatively lat-
erally homogeneous part of the field (Bradford,
1984). Fourth, porous and permeable strata in BEC
field are dominated by intercrystalline and mixed

Training: 1802,1877,1930 (1928) Figure 10—Comparison

Prediction: 1704 of predicted permeability
4 values with those
measured from the cores of
well 1704 for scenario two.
3.5
Observed
Neural Network
Regression
3

2.5
Permeability (md)

1.5

0.5

0
15248 –
–
–
–
15252 –
–
–
–
15256 –
–
–
–
15260 –
–
–
–
15277 –
–
–
–
15281 –
–
–
–
15285 –
–
–
–
15289 –
–
–
–
15293 –
–
–
–
15297 –
–
–
15301 –
–
–
–
15305 –
–
–
–
15309 –
–
–
–
15313 –
–
–
–
15317 –
–
–
–
15321 –
–
–
–
15325 –
–
–
–
15329 –
–
–
–
15333 –
–
–
–
15337 –
–
–
–
15341 –
–
–
–
15345 –
–
–
–
15349 –
–
–
–
15353 –
–
–
–
15357 –
–
–
–
–

Depth (ft)
 Rogers et al. 1795

Training: 1802,1877,1930 (1928) Figure 11—Comparison

Prediction: 1705 of predicted permeability
4 values with those
measured from the cores
Observed of well 1705 for scenario
Neural Network
3.5 two.
Regression

2.5
Permeability (md)

1.5

0.5

0
15136 –
–
–
15140 –
–
–
–
15144 –
–
–
15148 –
–
–
–
15152 –
–
–
–
15156 –
–
–
15160 –
–
–
–
15164 –
–
–
15168 –
–
–
–
15172 –
–
–
15176 –
–
–
–
15180 –
–
–
–
15184 –
–
–
15188 –
–
–
–
15192 –
–
–
15196 –
–
–
–
15200 –
–
–
–
15204 –
–
–
15210 –
–
–
–
15214 –
–
–
15218 –
–
–
–
15222 –
–
–
15226 –
–
–
–
15230 –
–
–
–
15234 –
–
–
15238 –
–
–
–
15242 –
–
–
15246 –
–
–
–
Depth (ft)

pore systems (Kopaska-Merkel and Mann, 1991).
This kind of pore system is controlled by deposi-
tional fabric only in the grossest sense (e.g., lime
mudstone is commonly not dolomitized and there-
fore is neither porous nor permeable). It is com-
monly impractical to discriminate among subtypes
of crystalline dolostone, which exhibit subtle differ-
ences in cr ystal size, shape, and distribution.
Hence, petrophysical properties, especially perme-
ability, are relatively independent of rock type. Also,
intercrystalline reservoirs exhibit consistently small
aspect ratios (pore to throat size ratio), consistent

Training: 1802,1877,1928,1930 (1705) Figure 12—Comparison

Prediction: 1704 of predicted permeability
4 values with those
measured from the cores
3.5 Observed of well 1704 for scenario
Neural Network three.
3 Regression

2.5
Permeability (md)

1.5

0.5

0
15246 –
–
–
–
15251 –
–
–
–
15256 –
–
–
–
15261 –
–
–
15279 –
–
–
–
15284 –
–
–
–
15289 –
–
–
–
15294 –
–
–
15299 –
–
–
–
15304 –
–
–
–
15309 –
–
–
–
15314 –
–
–
15319 –
–
–
–
15324 –
–
–
–
15329 –
–
–
–
15334 –
–
–
15339 –
–
–
–
15344 –
–
–
–
15349 –
–
–
–
15354 –
–
–
–
15359 –
–
–
15364 –
–
–
–
15369 –
–
–
–
15374 –
–
–
–
15379 –
–
–
–
15384 –
–
–
15389 –
–

Depth (ft)
1796 Predicting Permeability
pore and throat shapes, and are relatively homoge-
neous on a microscopic scale (Kopaska-Merkel and
Mann, 1992). Consequently, porosity is the most
useful predictor of permeability in intercrystalline
reservoirs.
CONCLUSIONS
We have demonstrated by way of three different
scenarios the utility and superiority of neural net-
works in predicting permeability values from
porosity values. A properly trained network would
predict permeability values in noncored wells from
log-derived porosity values more accurately than
would regression analysis. The ANN approach is
model free; that is, no functional form (such as lin-
ear, polynomial, or multiple) between permeability
and porosity values need be assumed; however, the
neural-network approach is but one of several pre-
dictive tools available in the geologist’s toolbox.
Also, more field studies should be conducted to fur-
ther explore the scope and power of this new
approach.
The network used in this study was specifically
designed to use only spatial and porosity informa-
tion to predict permeability. These kinds of informa-
tion are available for nearly any hydrocarbon field
and are inexpensive to collect; however, the neural-
network architecture readily permits use of other
kinds of information to improve the performance of
the network, if such information is available.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
S. J. Rogers
Samuel J. Rogers is an application engineer for the
Intergraph Corporation in Huntsville, Alabama. He
received his M.A. degree in computer science from the
University of Alabama. He is currently working on a book
adressing object-oriented neural-network architectures.
H. C. Chen
Hiu-Chuan Chen is a professor of computer science at
the University of Alabama. She received a Ph.D. from the
State University of New York at Buffalo in 1972, and was
a visiting scholar in the Department of Computer
Science at Stanford University from 1979 to 1980. Her
research interests include algorithm design, AI tech-
niques, expert systems, neural networks, and fuzzy
logic. She has conducted research for JPL, the
Department of Energy, Marine Terminal Computer
Systems, and several oil companies.
Rogers et al. 1797
D. C. Kopaska-Merkel
David Kopaska-Merkel is ground water section head
at the Geological Survey of Alabama. He earned a Ph.D.
in geology from the University of Kansas in 1983 and has
worked as a petroleum geolgist, carbonate sedimentolo-
gist, and hydrogeologist for Shell Oil Company, the
Northeastern Science Foundation, and the Geological
Survey of Alabama.
J. H. Fang
Jen-Ho Fang is a professor of geology at the University
of Alabama. He received his B.S. degree from the
National Taiwan University, and his Ph.D. from
Pennsylvania State University in 1961. He is a fellow of
the Mineralogical Society of America and the Geological
Society of America. He was once a mineralogist, and a
mineral, “Fangite” (TI3ASS4), was named after him. He
served as president of the Mathematical Geologists of the
United States.