Data mining applications in hydrocarbon exploration

This paper presents a review of the use of intelligent data analysis techniques in Hydrocarbon Exploration. The term "intelligent" is used in its broadest sense. The process of hydrocarbon exploration exploits data which have been collected from different sources. Different dimensions of data are analyzed by using Statistical Analysis, Data Mining, Artificial Neural Networks and Artificial Intelligence. This review is meant not only to describe the evolution of intelligent data analysis techniques used in different phases of hydrocarbon exploration but also signifying the growing use of Data Mining in various application domains; we avoided a general review of Data Mining and other intelligent data analysis techniques in this paper. The volume of general literature might affect the precision of our view regarding the application of these techniques in hydrocarbon exploration. The review reveals the suitability of existing techniques to data collected from diverse sources in addition to the use of analytical techniques for the process of hydrocarbon exploration.