Applying Machine Learning to Predict the Rate of Penetration for Geothermal Drilling Located in the Utah FORGE Site

Well planning for every drilling project includes cost estimation. Maximizing the rate of penetration (ROP) reduces the time required for drilling, resulting in reducing the expenses required for the drilling budget. The empirical formulas developed to predict ROP have limited field applications. Since real-time drilling data acquisition and computing technologies have improved over the years, we implemented the data-driven approach for this purpose. We investigated the potential of machine learning and deep learning algorithms to predict the nonlinear behavior of the ROP. The well was drilled to confirm the geothermal reservoir characteristics for the FORGE site. After cleaning and preprocessing the data, we selected two models and optimized their hyperparameters. According to our findings, the random forest regressor and the artificial neural network predicted the behavior of our field ROP with a maximum absolute mean error of 3.98, corresponding to 19% of the ROP's standard deviation. A tool was created to assist engineers in selecting the best drilling parameters that increase the ROP for future drilling tasks. The tool can be validated with an existing well from the same field to demonstrate its capability as an ROP predictive model.

Automated summary

This article introduces a data-driven approach for predicting the rate of penetration (ROP) using machine learning and deep learning algorithms to predict the nonlinear behavior of ROP. The method has a small error in field applications and can help engineers choose the best drilling parameters to improve ROP.