Artificial intelligence...as a decision support system for petroleum engineers

Artificial intelligence (AI) has drawn the attention of many researchers over the last two decades. It is gaining popularity at a rapid pace. The main interest in AI has its roots in the recognition that the human brain processes information at much slower rate than computer gates, yet human brains are more efficient than computers at computationally complex tasks such as understanding speech and other pattern recognition problems. In the oil and gas field, AI call help engineers and researchers to overcome difficulties by addressing some fundamental problems (such as the determination of formation permeability from well logs) or specific problems (such as forecasting postfracture well-performance ill the absence of engineering data), which conventional computing has been unable to solve. This paper presents a historical overview of the advancement of All systems along with presentation of the various systems developed over the last decade. A detailed discussion of the importance of AI as a valuable tool in the petroleum industry is presented. The various mechanisms by which AI achieves its objective are also discussed. The main goal of this paper is to put Artificial Intelligence in perspective from the point of view of petroleum engineering and encourage engineers and researchers to consider it as a valuable alternative tool ill the petroleum industry.