Machine learning models for estimating the overall oil recovery of waterflooding operations in heterogenous reservoirs

Waterflooding is the most widely used improved oil recovery technique. Predicting the overall oil recovery resulting from waterflooding in oil reservoirs is crucial for effective reservoir management and appropriate decision-making. Machine learning (ML) techniques present resourceful and fast-track tools, aiding in predicting oil recovery, which is time-consuming and costly to accomplish by simulation studies. In this paper, four machine learning models: artificial neural network (ANN), Random Forest (RF), K-Nearest Neighbor (K-NN), and Support Vector Machine (SVM) are applied to estimate the overall oil recovery (R) of water flooding. Initially, statistical methods were employed to analyze the input data before applying machine learning techniques. These models take into consideration the mobility ratio (M), reservoir permeability variation (V), water-oil production ratio (WOR), and initial water saturation (S_Wi). 1054 datasets were utilized to develop machine-learning models. ANN-based correlation was developed to estimate the overall oil recovery of waterflooding. The ANN proposed model achieves a high coefficient of determination (R²) of 0.999 and a low root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 0.0063 on the validation dataset. On the other hand, the other machine learning models like RF, K-NN, and SVM achieve accurate estimation of overall oil recovery (R), where the coefficients of determination (R²) values are 0.97, 0.95, and 0.80 and the RMSE scores are 0.0282, 0.0405, and 0.0629 on the validation dataset, respectively. The innovative application of such ML models demonstrates significant improvements in prediction accuracy and reliability, offering a robust solution for optimizing oil recovery processes. These machine learning models provide the industry and research with efficient and economical tools for accurately estimating oil recovery in waterflooding operations within heterogeneous reservoirs.