Automated facies classification from well logs

Abstract

Facies of a formation are classified from data charactering properties of a portion of the formation as a function of depth, wherein the number of facies is determined automatically in an unsupervised manner without human input. In one embodiment, a layer-based methodology is provided that performs facies classification based on layer-based properties which are determined from well log data obtained from a plurality of different well logging tools. In another embodiment, a depth-based methodology is provided that performs facies classification based on well log data obtained depth-by-depth from a plurality of different well logging tools. The number of facies can be determined automatically without human input, for example using the Bayesian Information Criterion or a method which determines the optimal number of clusters based on the repeatability of the clustering results. In embodiments, the facies classification can be performed using the Gaussian mixture model (GMM) method.