Abstract

Hybrid models have frequently been used for shale gas production decline prediction by manipulating the unique strength of each of the known decline models. The use of a combination of models provides a more precise predicting model for forecasting time series data as compared to an individual model. In this study, the forecasting performance of decline curve hybrid models and ANN-ARIMA hybrid models are evaluated and compared with Arps#x2019;, Duong#x2019;s, the Power Law Exponential Decline, Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) and Artificial Neutral Network (ANN) models, respectively. The variable used to assess the models was the respective flow rate, q(t) monitored over a period of time (T). The results have shown that the single model approach can outperform hybrid models. The average deviation of the two best models indicates a central tendency of the production data around the mean. Subsequently, the spread in the data between the actual and predicted values is found to be less. It can thus be concluded that the ARIMA and ANN models have the best forecasting accuracy for production decline in shale gas compared to the other models.