A Comprehensive review of data-driven approaches for forecasting production from unconventional reservoirs: best practices and future directions
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Prediction of well production from unconventional reservoirs is a complex problem given an incomplete understanding of physics despite large amounts of data. Recently, Data Analytics Techniques (DAT) have emerged as an effective approach for production forecasting for unconventional reservoirs. In some of these approaches, DAT are combined with physics-based models to capture the essential physical mechanisms of fluid flow in porous media, while leveraging the power of data-driven methods to account for uncertainties and heterogeneities. Here, we provide an overview of the applications and performance of DAT for production forecasting of unconventional reservoirs examining and comparing predictive models using different algorithms, validation benchmarks, input data, number of wells, and formation types. We also discuss the strengths and limitations of each model, as well as the challenges and opportunities for future research in this field. Our analysis shows that machine learning (ML) based models can achieve satisfactory performance in forecasting production from unconventional reservoirs. We measure the performance of the models using two dimensionless metrics: mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) and coefficient of determination (R2). The predicted and actual production data show a high degree of agreement, as most of the models have a low error rate and a strong correlation. Specifically, ~ 65% of the models have MAPE less than 20%, and more than 80% of the models have R2 higher than 0.6. Therefore, we expect that DAT can improve the reliability and robustness of production forecasting for unconventional resources. However, we also identify some areas for future improvement, such as developing new ML algorithms, combining DAT with physics-based models, and establishing multi-perspective approaches for comparing model performance.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.014 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.006 | 0.008 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".