Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 147 (2016) 4755

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Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/petrol

Forecasting density, oil formation volume factor and bubble point

pressure of crude oil systems based on nonlinear system identication
approach
Saeed Salehinia a,n, Yaser Salehinia b, Fatemeh Alimadadi c, Seyed Hossein Sadati b
a

Mechanical Engineering Department, Shahid Rajaee Teacher Training University, Tehran, Iran
Mechanical Engineering Department, K. N. Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
c
Central Training Department of National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), Tehran, Iran
b

art ic l e i nf o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 19 September 2015
Received in revised form
4 April 2016
Accepted 6 May 2016
Available online 7 May 2016

Accurate predictions of uid properties, such as density, oil formation volume factor and bubble point
pressure, are essentials for all reservoir engineering calculations. In this paper, an approach based on
nonlinear system identication modeling; Nonlinear ARX (NARX) and Hammerstein-Wiener (HW) predictive model, is proposed for forecasting the pressure/volume/temperature (PVT) properties of crude oil
systems. To this end, two datasets; one containing 168 PVT samples from different Iranian oil reservoirs
and other a databank containing 755 data from various geographical locations, were employed to construct (i.e. train) and evaluate (i.e. test) the models. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed
NARX and HW models outperform previously employed methods including three types of articial
neural networks models (committee machine, multilayer perceptron and radial basis function), two
types of ANFIS models (grid partition and fuzzy c-mean) and several empirical correlations with the
smallest prediction error, and that they are reliable models for predicting the oil properties in reservoirs
engineering among other soft computing approaches.
& 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
PVT
Oil formation volume factor
Density
Bubble point pressure
Nonlinear autoregressive exogenous (NARX)
Hammerstein-Wiener

1. Introduction
Obtaining properties of reservoir uid has a very important
application in reservoir engineering computation such as inow
performance calculations, well test analysis, numerical reservoir
simulation, reserve estimates and material balance calculations
(Osman et al., 2001). One essential necessity for all types of petroleum calculations is the PVT properties such as design of uid
handling equipment, reservoir volumetric estimates and determination of hydrocarbon owing properties. Idyllically, in order
to extract desired PVT properties, these properties must be acquired through laboratorial analysis of real measurements/samples collected from the oil wells location. Most often, though, these
measurements are not fully available, because of one or more of
these reasons: a) Samples collected are not reliable. b) Samples
have not been taken because of cost saving. c) PVT analyses are not
available when needed (Hemmati and Kharrat, 2007). As a result,
many correlations models have been developed to relate these
desired properties (e.g. density and bubble point pressure) to
other measures which are relatively abundant and/or easier to
n

Corresponding author.
E-mail address: saeed.salehinia@gmail.com (S. Salehinia).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.petrol.2016.05.008
0920-4105/& 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

measure (e.g. temperature, pressure and API gravity). The geological condition is considered important for the development of a
correlation, since the chemical composition of crude oil varies
from region to region (Al-Marhoun, 2004). Therefore, all calculations will depend on the precision of the correlations used for
predicting the uid properties (Osman et al., 2001).
During the past sixty years, the importance of developing and
utilizing empirical correlations for PVT properties has been recognized by engineers. Consequently, much research has been
conducted in this eld and lead to the development of new empirical correlations. Katz (1942) published a graphical correlation
for predicting oil formation volume factor (Bo) factor. Katz used U.
S. mid-continent crude to develop his correlations. Al-Marhoun
(1985, 2004) correlations consist of equations for estimating
bubble point pressure (Pb), solution gas-oil ratio and Bo for Saudi
Arabia oils. These correlations were developed using 75 bottomhole samples from 62 reservoirs in Saudi Arabia. Petrosky and
Farshad (1993) presented correlations for estimating Pb, solution
gas oil ratio, Bo factor and oil compressibility for Gulf of Mexico
oils. The correlations were developed with uid samples taken
from offshore Texas and Louisiana. Khan et al. (1987) used samples
from 75 bottom-hole from 65 Saudi Arabia reservoirs and developed equations for estimating oil viscosity for Saudi Arabia oils at
above and below the bubble point. Glaso (1980) presented

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S. Salehinia et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 147 (2016) 4755

Nomenclature
ANFIS
ANN
API
Bo
Ea
Emax
Emin
Er
FCM
GP

adaptive neural fuzzy interface system

articial neural network
oil API gravity
oil formation volume factor
average absolute percent relative error
maximum absolute percent relative error
minimum absolute percent relative error
average percent relative error
fuzzy c-mean
grid partition

HW
M
NARX
P
Pb
R2
Rs
T
o
g
o

Hammerstein-wiener
membership function
nonlinear autoregressive exogenous
pressure (psia)
bubble point pressure
coefcient of determination
solution gas/oil (scf/stb)
temperature (F)
oil specic gravity
gas specic gravity
density (g/cm3)

Fig. 1. ANFIS structure.

Fig. 2. Structure of NARX model.

correlations for estimating Pb, solution gas-oil ratio and Bo for

North Sea oils. In other studies such as Hanafy et al. (1997),
Egyptian crude oil were used to estimate correlations for Pb, solution gas-oil ratio, Bo, oil compressibility, oil density and oil
viscosity. Also Standing (1962), using 105 experimental data points
on 22 different oil-gas mixtures from California reservoirs, proposed correlations for estimating Pb, solution gas-oil ratio and Bo
for California oils. In another study, Vazquez and Beggs (1980),
using analyses of 600 laboratory PVT from elds all over the world,
correlations for solution gas-oil ratio, Bo and oil compressibility
were presented.
The main problem of these correlations is that they are not
adequately accurate, since they are usually based on specic regions of oil elds. Therefore, researchers turned to soft computing
methods for a greater accuracy, faster, and easier way of predicting
important properties from available PVT parameters. Another
popular means of obtaining reservoir properties is the method of
Articial Neural Networks (ANNs). Many researchers have investigated that ANNs are able to solve the PVT correlation problems in the petroleum industry (Shokir et al., 2004). Therefore, in
recent years researchers have utilized ANNs to predict more accurate PVT correlations (Osman and Al-Marhoun, 2005; Asadisaghandi and Tahmasebi, 2011; Alimadadi et al., 2011; Abedini et al.,
2012; Talebi et al., 2014). Obviously recurrent neural networks like
ANN, because of their intrinsic nonlinearity and computational
simplicity, are natural candidates to approximate a given model for
a predictive purpose such as oil system properties. However, system identication approach as one of the widely employed
method for prediction purposes; including such convenient model
forms for prediction purposes like the Nonlinear AutoRegressive
with exogenous inputs (NARX) model and Hammerstein-Wiener
(HW) model has not been employed before, to the authors
knowledge, for crude oil properties forecasting. This study propose
an approach, i. e. NARX and HW modeling for predicting reservoiruid PVT properties such as density, Bo and Pb with high accuracy.

S. Salehinia et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 147 (2016) 4755

49

Fig. 3. Structure of Hammerstein-Wiener model.

Table 1
Ranges of inputs and outputs data used in training of the models.
Inputs

Maximum
Minimum
Average

Outputs

Pb (psia)

Temperature (F)

Pressure (psia)

Rs (Scf/STB)

API

Bo

o (g/cm3)

4416
1090
2805.4

277
140
222.3

6548
1413
3778.1

1998.4
255.16
899.92

34.77
18.91
26.87

0.8807
0.5351
0.7086

1.3103
0.7883
1.0405

2.3947
1.1680
1.5908

0.8798
0.5345
0.7079

Table 2
Ranges of output data used in validation (calibration) and test of the models.

Maximum
Minimum
Average

Validation (calibration)

Test

Bo

Bo

2.3532
2.0612
2.2101

0.5839
0.5345
0.5577

2.1782
1.9722
2.0671

0.6165
0.5839
0.6022

Type of model PVT

Input number Properties NARX and ANFIS-FCM

density
u1
Pb

u2
T
u3
P

u4
Rs

u5
API

u6

o
u7

HW and ANFIS-GP
Bo

Table 4
Conguration of the HW model.
Output Inputs nonlinearity
Bo

One-dimensional polynomial of degree 2

Linear block order Output nonlinearity

nb = [1 1 1 1 1 1 1]
nf = [3 3 3 3 3 3 3]

2. Methodology
2.1. Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS)

Table 3
Inputs specication used for each model.
Type of input

brief introduction of ANFIS and then the proposed NARX and HW

models and their structure in presented. Section 3 provides comparative simulation results of the proposed NARX and HW models
with ANFIS, ANN and empirical correlations methods. Finally, the
conclusions and future work recommendations are given in Section 4.

One-dimensional polynomial of degree 1

nk = [0 0 0 0 0 0 0]

Table 5
Conguration of the NARX model.
Output

Class of estimator

Regressors orders

Density

Wavelet network with 1 unit

na = [1]
nb = [1 1 1 1 1 1]
nk = [0 0 0 0 0 0]

Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) was developed

by Jang (1993) to minimize an output error measure and maximize
cost index. ANFIS is a multilayered feed-forward neural network
based on sugeno fuzzy inference system which has been widely
applied for modeling, predicting and control of stochastic and
nonlinear processes. ANFIS concurrently uses fuzzy reasoning and
neural network calculation to establish mapping relation from
input variables to output parameter. Faster convergence, smoothness, adaptability, smaller size of the training set and optimization
search space are the main advantages of using ANFIS rather than
neural networks and fuzzy systems. Fig. 1 describe the structure of
an ANFIS model. The rst layer in the ANFIS structure is the fuzzication layer; the second layer performs the rule base layer; the
third layer carry out the normalization of membership functions
(MFs); the fourth and fth layers are the defuzzication and
summation layers, respectively.
Design process of ANFIS model consist of two stages: building
and training. The building stage is to dene number of inputs,
number and type of MFs. In this stage the input/output relation is
made into rule patches. This can be achieved by using a number of
methods such as grid partitioning (GP), subtractive clustering and
fuzzy c-means (FCM) methods (Jang, 1993). In the training stage,
the ANFIS is given the ability to learn from training data by employing the ANN technique to update the parameters of the TakagiSugeno type inference model. Then, the solutions mapped
out onto a Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) can therefore be described
in linguistic terms.
2.2. Nonlinear ARX model

Moreover, to illustrate the performance of the proposed approach,

its performance will be compared with empirical correlations,
ANFIS and ANN approaches. ANFIS as another commonly used
method for prediction of reservoir oil properties (Olatunji et al.,
2011; Khoukhi, 2012; Zamani et al., 2015) is also employed in this
study for comparison purpose.
The rest of this paper organized as follow. In Section 2, at rst a

NARX models, as a nonlinear black-box model, can be used as

indicative of nonlinear dynamic from a wide variety of behaviors
and have been extensively used in various applications. (Ljung,
2012; Andalib and Atry, 2009; Salehinia et al., 2013). Typically, the
NARX models will be used as black-box structures and have
structure as Eq. (1):

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S. Salehinia et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 147 (2016) 4755

B1(z) / F1(z) =1 / 1 + 0.008944 z-1 + 0.01702 z-2 + 0.009564 z-3

B2(z) / F2(z) =1 / 1 - 0.02326 z-1 - 0.018 z-2 + 0.05053 z-3
B3(z) / F3(z) =1 / 1 - 0.02494 z-1 - 0.001768 z-2 + 0.05377 z-3
B4(z) / F4(z) =1 / 1 - 0.0008197 z-1 + 0.0006179 z-2 - 0.009482 z-3
B5(z) / F5(z) =1 / 1 - 0.8269 z-1 - 0.5202 z-2 + 0.7 z-3
B6(z) / F6(z) =1 / 1 - 0.9308 z-1 + 0.01357 z-2 + 0.07072 z-3
B7(z) / F7(z) =1 / 1 - 0.02347 z-1 - 0.2675 z-2 - 0.05565 z-3
Fig. 4. Structure of the HW model with highest performance.

y(t ) = f (

y(t 1), ... , y(t na), u(t nk ), ...

,u(t nk nb + 1)

2.3. Hammerstein-Wiener model

(1)

where the function f depends on a nite number of previous

inputs u and outputs y. na is the number of past output terms and
nb is the number of past input terms used to predict the current
output. nk is the delay from the input to the output, specied as
the number of samples. As it can be seen from the NARX structure
in Fig. 2, the NARX model uses a parallel combination of nonlinear
and linear blocks. The NARX model utilizes regressors as variables
for nonlinear and linear functions. Regressors are functions of
measured input-output data (Ljung, 2012). The predicted output
y^ (t ) of a nonlinear model at time t is given by the general Eq. (2):

y^ (t ) = F (x(t ))

(2)

where x(t ) represents the regresses, F is a nonlinear regresses

command, which is estimated by nonlinearity estimators/classes
(Kumar et al., 2010). As shown in Fig. 2, the command F can include both linear and nonlinear functions of x(t ). Eq. (3) gives the
description of F.

F (x) = LT (x r ) + d + g (Q (x r ))

(3)

The exact form of F(x) depends on type of the nonlinearity

estimator. However, in general, the rst part is the output from
linear function block, d is the output offset, and the third part is
the output from nonlinear function block; where L is coefcient of
the linear function, g is the unit nonlinear command, r is the mean
of regressors x, and Q is the parameter of the nonlinearity estimators (Ljung, 2012). The NARX model computes the output in
two stages: 1) Using current and past input values and past output
data, computes regressors. 2.) Using a combination of nonlinear
and linear function, the nonlinearity estimator block maps the
regressors to the model output.

When the output of a system depends nonlinearly on its inputs,

sometimes it is possible to decompose the input-output relationship into two or more interconnected elements. In this case, the
dynamics can be represented by a linear transfer function and
capture the nonlinearities using nonlinear functions of inputs and
outputs of the linear system. The HW model achieves this conguration as a series connection of static nonlinear blocks with a
dynamic linear block as shown in Fig. 3. The HW model can be
used as a black-box model structure because it provides a exible
parameterization for nonlinear models (Ljung 2012).
where B and F are backward shifting operator, and w(t) f(u(t))
is a nonlinear function transforming input data u(t). For ny outputs
and nu inputs, the linear block is a transfer function matrix containing entries:

Bj, i(q)
Fj, i(q)

(4)

where j 1,2,,ny and i1,2,,nu.

y(t) h(x(t)) is a nonlinear function that maps the output of the
linear block to the system output. w(t) and x(t) are internal variables that dene the input and output of the linear block, respectively. Function f is called the input nonlinearity and function
h is called the output nonlinearity. The nonlinearities f and h are
scalar functions, one nonlinear function for each input and output
channel. The linear block setting [nb, nf, nk] sets the order of the
linear transfer function, where nb is the number of zeros plus 1, nf
is the number of poles, and nk is the input delay. The HW model
computes the output y in three stages: 1) Computes w(t) f(u(t))
from the input data. w(t) is an input to the linear transfer function
B/F. 2) Computes the output of the linear block using w(t) and
initial conditions: x(t)(B/F)w(t). 3) Compute the model output by
transforming the output of the linear block x(t) using the nonlinear
function h: y(t)h(x(t)).

S. Salehinia et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 147 (2016) 4755

51

volume at a specic pressure and temperature. This property is one of the most
important parameters necessary for reservoir calculations and uid mobility. Pb is
one of the key PVT property of reservoir uid, which plays a critical role in almost
all tasks related to reservoir and production engineering. On one hand, obtaining
uid properties of reservoirs is very important for petroleum engineering. On the
other hand, a complete data information of PVT properties is not available for some
reservoirs, and moreover, calculating uid properties in laboratories is time consuming and expensive-not to mention human errors. Hence, a soft computing
technique to predict necessary uid properties is the solution which engineers have
been using recently.

3.1. Dataset 1: Bo and density

Fig. 5. Structure of the NARX model with highest performance.

Table 6
Testing results for prediction of density (o).
Model

R2

Hanafy et al. (1997)

Vazquez and Beggs (1980)
Ahmed (1985)
ANN (Alimadadi et al., 2011)
ANFIS-FCM
NARX

0.994  0.2471
0.996 0.1555
0.996 1.0139
0.991  0.470
0.996  0.0646
0.999 6.60E  4

Er (%)

Ea (%)

|Er|min (%) |Er|max (%)

0.2580
0.1555
1.0139
0.479
0.0718
0.0028

0.0423
0.0343
0.2820
0.252
3.48E  3
8.36E  7

1.1085
0.2549
2.3367
0.643
0.3140
0.0163

Table 7
Testing results for prediction of Bo.
Model

R2

Vazquez and Beggs (1980)

Glaso (1980)
Ahmed (1985)
ANN (Alimadadi et al.,
2011)
ANFIS-GP
HW

0.996 9.2714
9.2714 9.1052
0.997  10.8012 10.8012 9.3991
0.996 8.4578
8.4578 7.0791
0.973  1.743
1.743
0.466

Er (%)

0.999  0.2004
0.999 7.14E  03

Ea (%)

|Er|min (%)

1.2723 0.8766
0.0137 5.01E  07

|Er|max (%)
9.5440
12.2908
9.3193
2.71
1.9974
0.0989

3. Results and discussion

Bo is a key factor in terms of economic issues, which is dened as the volume of
reservoir oil that would take up one stock-tank barrel plus any dissolved gas at the
reservoir pressure and temperature. Density is dened as the mass of oil per unit of

To design the predictive models for Bo and density, a dataset comprising of 168
data points from 21 different petroleum elds from the south and west reservoirs
of the Iran have been used. In this dataset, there are 8 data points from each eld
with limited range of API gravity. To develop the models, 136 out of 168 PVT data
points was used to train the models. In order to prevent the over tting of the
models during training process, 16 data points was used for validation. The remaining 16 data points that were not shown to the models (blind data) were used
to investigate and test the accuracy of the models. These data has not been introduced to the system in the training process. All the PVT data used in this study
were selected from undersaturated petroleum reservoirs. Choosing appropriate
ranges of input and output is a really important step to have well-trained models
and leads to very accurate and reliable results at the end. The ranges of input and
output data used for training of the models are shown in Table 1. Also, the ranges of
output data used for validation (calibration) and test are shown in Table 2.
Finding the best conguration for an ANFIS model must be done through
testing different setting; there is yet no basis to nd most effective conguration
for ANFIS at any dened problem. However, monitoring root mean squared errors
at the different number of epochs for training and checking data is the simplest
way to steer at desired performance. To design an ANFIS model, number and type
of MF have a key role. Extensive search carried out to nd the proper structure and
optimal number of MFs for the best ANFIS model(s). To this end, best model for
density obtained through generating a FIS using FCM with 11 Gaussian MFs for each
input and constant MF for output. Then the obtained FIS used to train an ANFIS
model. Furthermore, best model for Bo obtained through generating a FIS using GP
with 2 MFs for each input and linear MF for the output. By applying various linear
and nonlinear MF, triangular MF for inputs 1, 4 and 7; and generalized-bell MF for
inputs 2, 3, 5 and 6 have displayed better performance. Then the obtained FIS used
for training of an ANFIS model. In order to tune adaptive parameters of ANFIS
models, training of network and optimal distribution of MFs are executed by hybrid
learning algorithm composed of least squares estimates and back propagation error
to perform forward pass and backward pass respectively.
In the case of proposed blocks-structured models, also several NARX and HW
models were obtained. Apart from choosing the type of inputs for models, in addition, the combination of various estimator and order were tested too. To speed up
the process of nding the best models and also decreasing the complexity choosing
the proper ones; best-t as shown in Eq. (5) between model output and real data as
a percentage value was monitored. In this equation, y is the measured output, y^ is
the predicted model output, and y is the mean of y. The higher the value is closer to
100%, the better the model can perform and predict the real data. After investigating several possibilities, the best result achieved through using a NARX
model for predicting density and a HW model for Bo.

y y^
Best fit=(1

y y

)*100

(5)

The inputs used for estimating the NARX, HW and ANFIS models are shown in
Table 3. The real dataset contains 26 different properties of oil. As it can be seen in
Table 3, after thorough study of the inputs and their effect on the behavior of the
outputs, the appropriate inputs were selected. The selected inputs for the best
NARX, HW and ANFIS models are the same. Tables 4 and 5 summarize the conguration, and Figs. 4 and 5 illustrate the structure and properties of linear and
nonlinear blocks of the best attained HW and NARX models, respectively.
To evaluate the performance and accuracy of the selected NARX, HW and ANFIS
models, the 16 blind data points were fed to the models, and the predicted outputs
of the models were compared with real data of density and Bo using important
statistical criteria including coefcient of determination (R2), average percent relative error (Er) and average absolute percent relative error (Ea). These statistical
quality measures are calculated as follows:

R2 = 1

Er =

100
n

n
i = 1 (yireal yimodel )2
n
i = 1 (yireal average(yireal ))2
n

(
i =1

yireal yimodel
yireal

(6)

)
(7)

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S. Salehinia et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 147 (2016) 4755

Fig. 6. Comparison of the predicted oil properties versus Ea.

Ea =

100
n

(
i =1

yireal yimodel
yireal

)
(8)

where yireal is the real/measured value of ith sample, yimodel is the predicted
value of the ith sample by the model, and n represent the total number of data
points.
The empirical correlations of Ahmed (1985), Hanafy et al. (1997) and Vazquez
and Beggs (1980) have been selected for estimating and comparing the results of
density; and correlations of Ahmed (1985), Glaso (1980) and Vazquez and Beggs
(1980) were used for estimating and comparing the results of Bo. Furthermore, the
results also were compared with a committee machine type ANN model that was
trained and evaluated with the same dataset used in this study. The comparison
results are summarized in Tables 6 and 7.
As can be seen from the Tables 6 and 7, performance of NARX and HW models
are outstanding. The results show that the NARX and HW models have predicted
the density and Bo values to the satisfactory extent. It can be seen that the NARX
and HW model results outperforms all ANFIS, ANN models and three most common published empirical correlations. The proposed NARX and HW models,
achieved the lowest Er, lowest Ea and a high R2 in the prediction of density and Bo
among the empirical correlations, ANN and ANFIS models. The Ea is an important
indicator of the accuracy of the models, which NARX and HW models achieved the
highest accuracy. It can be seen that NARX model shows a 96.6% improvement in
term of Ea over the ANFIS model, 99.4% over the ANN model, and also 98.2% over
best empirical correlation at predicting density. Also, the HW model shows a 98.9%
improvement in term of Ea over the ANFIS model, 99.2% over the ANN model, and
also 99.8% over best empirical correlation at predicting Bo.
Fig. 6 shows a comparison of the Ea and further illustrate the superiority of the
performance of the proposed NARX and HW models for predicting density and Bo
against the results from the ANFIS and ANN models. It is evident from the Fig. 6
that the performance of NARX and HW models is excellent. The results for empirical correlations had to be plotted separately, since their numerical results are
much greater than the NARX, HW and ANFIS models; would have made the results
in Fig. 6 incomparable.
Next, a sensitivity study carried out to illustrate the effect of the number of
training data on the accuracy of the results obtained from NARX, HW and ANFIS
methods. To this end, the training data have been reduced from 136 data in a

multistep test by the amount of 16 data in each step, while the 16 validation data
and 16 test data were remained the same (same as the previous test) at each step.
Fig. 7 demonstrate the results of sensitivity analysis for prediction of density and Bo.
According to the results from Fig. 7, the ANFIS models showed the highest
correlation with the number of training data; as the number of the training data
decreased so was the performance of ANFIS models. On the other hand, the accuracy of NARX model remained in a relatively constant range (less than 4e  3) up
until step ve. Even though the accuracy of NARX model decreased when the
number of training data became less than 72 data points, but even then the prediction accuracy of NARX model was to the satisfactory extend. It can be seen that
the NARX model was able to accurately predict the density using only 24 training
data. The sensitivity analysis of HW model showed that more training data is not
always equal to the greater accuracy, and that the HW model also can achieve high
prediction accuracy using less training data. The NARX and HW models showed
that they can provide satisfactory accuracy even when a few numbers of experimental data available to train with.
Finally, to achieve an unbiased estimation of the model performance for each
oil elds, the dataset can be divided randomly into k subsets of equal size and kfold cross-validation performed. In this method, models are built k times, each time
leaving out a single subset as the validation data for testing the model and the
remaining k  1 subsets are used as training data. The k results from the folds, then
averaged to yield a single result. Since our dataset contains 168 data points from 21
different oil elds and each oil eld has 8 data points. Thus, the dataset can be
divided into 21 folds in which each fold contains 8 data (i.e., each fold contains the
data of one oil eld). This way, the prediction performances of the models can be
evaluated for 21 different elds. As stated, the result of a cross-validation test is
presented as a single averaged number presenting the performance of the proposed method over k subsets. However, here the prediction results and CPU time
from each subsets also provided so that the results in more details are available for
comparison. The results of 21-fold cross-validation for density and Bo are shown in
Fig. 8.
It can be seen from cross-validation results in Fig. 8 that the blocks-structured
NARX and HW models with the lowest average of Ea have an excellent predictive
performance of PVT properties. The results demonstrate that the NARX and HW
models estimated 8 data points of the density and Bo in each 21 fold to the satisfactory extend. Hence, it could be concluded at this point that the NARX and HW
modeling approaches have better and reliable performance compared to the

S. Salehinia et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 147 (2016) 4755

Fig. 7. Sensitivity results for number of training data versus Ea.

Fig. 8. Error results of cross-validation: (a) NARX (b) ANFIS-FCM (c) HW (d) ANFIS-GP.

53

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S. Salehinia et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 147 (2016) 4755

Table 8
Ranges of PVT properties of crude oil systems in the databank.

Maximum
Minimum
Average

Rs (Scf/STB)

API

T (F)

Pb (psi)

3298.66
1.395
592.387

3.4445
0.521
1.1156

56.8
6.0
34.36

360.93
74.00
207.167

6613.82
58.0152
1846.0504

Table 9
Conguration of the developed NARX, HW and ANFIS models for Pb.
Model

Class of nonlinear estimator

Orders of

NARX

Sigmoid network with 40 units

Regressors:
na [0]
nb [1 1 1 1]
nk [0 0 0 2]

HW

input1
input2
input3
input4

Linear block:
nb [3 3 3 3]
nf [4 4 4 4]
nk [0 0 0 0]

(T): sigmoid network with 20 units

(Rs): piecewise linear with 30 units
(API): piecewise linear with 30 units
( g ): piecewise linear with 30 units

output (Pb): wavelet network with 5 units

ANFIS-GP input1
input2
MF
input3
input4

(T): Difference between two sigmoidal MF

(Rs): Difference between two sigmoidal

MFs: [2 2 2 2]

(API): Gaussian MF
( g ): Difference between two sigmoidal

MF
output (Pb): Linear MF

developed empirical correlations and the two types of ANFIS models presented
here.
3.2. Dataset 2: bubble point pressure
In this subsection, in order to investigate the effectiveness of the proposed
NARX and HW modeling method on other oil elds and as well as for estimating
other PVT properties, the predictive performance of the NARX and HW models
were assessed for prediction of reservoir oil saturation pressure at various conditions. For this purpose, a large databank attained from Talebi et al. (2014) which in
turn they have gathered from nine other studies. The gathered databank includes
755 experimental data of Rs, , T, API, and bubble point pressure (Pb) from a variety
of crude oils (heavy oils to volatile oil) ranges and from various geographical locations. The PVT data in the databank cover a wide range of conditions, as shown
Table 8.
Talebi et al. (2014) developed two models based on Multilayer Perceptron
(MLP) and Radial Basis Function (RBF) neural networks for prediction of Pb, and
considered the Pb to be a function of Rs, g , T and API. At the end, the MLP-ANN and
RBF-ANN models prediction results have been compared with sixteen published
correlations. Similarly, in this study two models based on NARX and HW methods
have been built using Rs, g , T and API as inputs and Pb as output. Similar to the
previous section, an ANFIS model also has been built for comparison purposes. The
outlines of the developed NARX, HW and ANFIS models are presented in Table 9.
Moreover, the amount of data for training set and testing set has been selected
equal to the chosen numbers of the RBF-ANN model in Talebi et al. (2014).
Fig. 9 shows cross plots of the developed NARX and HW models predicting Pb.
In cross plots, a close-tting cloud of points about 45 line for all of the data indicate the robustness of the developed models. Table 10 shows the result of statistical quality measures ((Eqs. (6)8)) of NARX and HW models compared with
different approaches for estimation of Pb in the databank.
As can be seen from Table 10, the HW model and especially the NARX model
shows a very good performance estimating Pb from various geographical locations
at various conditions. The superiority of NARX model is also evident from Fig. 9 in
which the cloud points of NARX model is tighter around 45 line than that of HW
model. Talebi et al. (2014) reported in their study that the majority of the presented
correlations have high error and could not accurately estimate the experimental
saturation pressures; among published empirical correlations the Ikiensikimama
and Ogboja (2009) correlation had the worst prediction performance and Arabloo
et al. (2014) correlation had the best result. Table 10 demonstrates that the developed NARX model has the smallest Er, Ea and also it has a high value of R2 close
to 1 in comparison to the two types of ANN models and sixteen empirical correlations presented by Talebi et al. (2014). Therefore, using NARX modeling method

Fig. 9. Cross plots of developed NARX and HW models.

Table 10
Prediction results of Pb by NARX, HW and ANFIS models in comparison with the
published results in Talebi et al. (2014).
Method

Er (%)

Ea (%)

R2

Ikiensikimama and Ogboja (2009)

Yi (2000)
Valko and McCain (2003)
Dindoruk and Christman (2004)
Arabloo et al. (2014)
Talebi et al. (2014) (MLP-ANN)
Talebi et al. (2014) (RBF-ANN)
ANFIS-GP
NARX
HW

 555.5
94.0
0.1
 2.8
3.2
 2.73
 3.28
 1.29
 0.79
 1.37

555.5
94.0
25.7
25.6
18.9
16.94
15.53
16.18
15.06
32.54

0.4
0.77
0.82
0.86
0.86
0.94
0.95
0.92
0.94
0.86

for prediction of Pb is a promising approach to achieve high prediction accuracy.

4. Conclusions and recommendations

Obtaining reservoir-uid characteristics is very important and

S. Salehinia et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 147 (2016) 4755

necessary for all reservoir calculations. Among such reliable

techniques, soft computing is accurate, quick, and cost effective
method for extracting precise values of important properties from
PVT data, as applied in this research. In this study, two blocksstructured NARX and HW models based on nonlinear system
identication approach was proposed for the prediction of density
(o), Oil FVF (Bo) and bubble point pressure (Pb) of crude oil
systems.
At rst, in order to predict density and Bo, a dataset consist of
168 PVT data points from 21 reservoirs in west and south of Iran
were used for training of the NARX and HW models. A comparative study carried out between the trained NARX and HW models
with three common empirical correlations, two types of ANFIS
models and a committee machine type ANN model. Simulation
results revealed that the NARX and HW models predicted the
density and Bo with the highest accuracy and outperformed the
empirical correlations, ANFIS and ANN models. The numerical
results demonstrate that both the NARX and HW models has the
smallest Ea and the smallest Er compared to other methods.
Moreover, two sensitivity study was conducted to assess the impact of the number of training data on prediction performance and
CPU time. The results of the sensitivity studies showed that the
NARX and HW models can provide satisfactory prediction accuracy
when fewer PVT data are available for training. In addition, a
cross-validation test was performed on the NARX, HW and ANFIS
models to further evaluate their predictive performances over 21
different oil elds. The cross-validation results revealed that the
NARX and HW models predicted the density and Bo from 21 different Iranian reservoirs to the satisfactory extend.
Finally, to assess the efciency of the NARX and HW models for
other oil elds and also estimating other PVT properties, a databank consist of 755 PVT data covering wide ranges of crude oils
was used to evaluate the accuracy of the NARX and HW models
predicting Pb from various geographical locations. The simulation
results demonstrate the superior performance of the NARX model
when compared with two MLP and RBF neural network models, an
ANFIS model and several empirical correlations.
For future work recommendations, we suggest employing the
proposed approach for forecasting other oil PVT properties such as
compressibility and viscosity since NARX and HW showed outstanding predictive performances. Moreover, we propose that
these two modeling approaches be used in another area like
porosity prediction, history matching, predicting the rock mechanics properties, ow regimes and liquid-holdup multiphase
follow since the proposed approach is exible and reliable and has
been used for modeling and prediction purposes in various area
(Andalib and Atry, 2009; Kumar et al., 2010; Salehinia et al., 2013;
Fathi and Ahmad, 2013).

Acknowledgment
The authors extend their thanks to Mr. Mohammad Mahdi
Ghiasi for sharing the PVT databank with us that made the improvement of the manuscript possible.

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