Semi-supervised least squares support vector machine algorithm: application to offshore oil reservoir

At the early stages of deep-water oil exploration and development, fewer and further apart wells are drilled than in onshore oilfields. Supervised least squares support vector machine algorithms are used to predict the reservoir parameters but the prediction accuracy is low. We combined the least squares support vector machine (LSSVM) algorithm with semi-supervised learning and established a semi-supervised regression model, which we call the semi-supervised least squares support vector machine (SLSSVM) model. The iterative matrix inversion is also introduced to improve the training ability and training time of the model. We use the UCI data to test the generalization of a semi-supervised and a supervised LSSVM models. The test results suggest that the generalization performance of the LSSVM model greatly improves and with decreasing training samples the generalization performance is better. Moreover, for small-sample models, the SLSSVM method has higher precision than the semi-supervised K-nearest neighbor (SKNN) method. The new semisupervised LSSVM algorithm was used to predict the distribution of porosity and sandstone in the Jingzhou study area.