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A Case Study on the Classification of Lost Circulation Events During Drilling using Machine Learning Techniques on an Imbalanced Large Dataset

This study presents machine learning models that forecast and categorize lost circulation severity preemptively using a large class imbalanced drilling dataset. We demonstrate reproducible core techniques involved in tackling a large drilling engineering challenge utilizing easily interpretable machine learning approaches. We utilized a 65,000+ records data with class imbalance problem from Azadegan oilfield formations in Iran. Eleven of the dataset's seventeen parameters are chosen to be used in the classification of five lost circulation events. To generate classification models, we used six basic machine learning algorithms and four ensemble learning methods. Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), Logistic Regression (LR), Support Vector Machines (SVM), Classification and Regression Trees (CART), k-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), and Gaussian Naive Bayes (GNB) are the six fundamental techniques. We also used bagging and boosting ensemble learning techniques in the investigation of solutions for improved predicting performance. The performance of these algorithms is measured using four metrics: accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score. The F1-score weighted to represent the data imbalance is chosen as the preferred evaluation criterion. The CART model was found to be the best in class for identifying drilling fluid circulation loss events with an average weighted F1-score of 0.9904 and standard deviation of 0.0015. Upon application of ensemble learning techniques, a Random Forest ensemble of decision trees showed the best predictive performance. It identified and classified lost circulation events with a perfect weighted F1-score of 1.0. Using Permutation Feature Importance (PFI), the measured depth was found to be the most influential factor in accurately recognizing lost circulation events while drilling.