Artificial neural network ANN approach to predict fracture pressure

Fracture pressure is a critical formation condition that affects efficiency and economy of drilling operations. The knowledge of the fracture pressure is significant to control the well. It will assist in avoiding problems associated with drilling operation and decreasing the cost of drilling operation. It is essential to predict fracture pressure accurately prior to drilling process to prevent various issues for example fluid loss, kicks, fracture the formation, differential pipe sticking, heaving shale and blowouts. Many models are used to estimate the fracture pressure either from log information or formation strengths. However, these models have some limitations such as some of the models can only be used in clean shales, applicable only for the pressure generated by under-compaction mechanism and some of them are not applicable in unloading formations. Few papers used artificial intelligence (AI) to estimate the fracture pressure. In this work, a real filed data that contain only the real time surface drilling parameters were utilized by artificial neural network (ANN) to predict the fracture pressure. The results indicated that artificial neural network (ANN) predicted the fracture pressures with an excellent precision where the coefficient of determination (R²) is greater than 0.99. In addition, the artificial neural network (ANN) was compared with other fracture pressure models such as Matthews and Kelly model, which is one of the most used models in the prediction of the fracture pressure in the field. Artificial neural network (ANN) model outperformed the fracture models by a high margin and by its simple prediction of fracture pressure where it can predict the fracture pressure from only the real time surface drilling parameters, which are easily available.