Generation of a complete profile for porosity log while drilling complex lithology by employing the artificial intelligence

The formation porosity of drilled rock is an important parameter that determines the formation storage capacity. The common industrial technique for rock porosity acquisition is through the downhole logging tool. Usually logging while drilling, or wireline porosity logging provides a complete porosity log for the section of interest, however, the operational constraints for the logging tool might preclude the logging job, in addition to the job cost. The objective of this study is to provide an intelligent prediction model to predict the porosity from the drilling parameters. Artificial neural network (ANN) is a tool of artificial intelligence (AI) and it was employed in this study to build the porosity prediction model based on the drilling parameters as the weight on bit (WOB), drill string rotating-speed (RS), drilling torque (T), stand-pipe pressure (SPP), mud pumping rate (Q). The novel contribution of this study is to provide a rock porosity model for complex lithology formations using drilling parameters in real-time. The model was built using 2,700 data points from well (A) with 74:26 training to testing ratio. Many sensitivity analyses were performed to optimize the ANN model. The model was validated using unseen data set (1,000 data points) of Well (B), which is located in the same field and drilled across the same complex lithology. The results showed the high performance for the model either for training and testing or validation processes. The overall accuracy for the model was determined in terms of correlation coefficient (R) and average absolute percentage error (AAPE). Overall, R was higher than 0.91 and AAPE was less than 6.1 % for the model building and validation. Predicting the rock porosity while drilling in real-time will save the logging cost, and besides, will provide a guide for the formation storage capacity and interpretation analysis.