First Break: A Practical Workflow for model-driven Seismic Inversion

We are very pleased to announce that our Inversion technical expert Dr Xin-Quan Ma has had a paper published in the May edition of First Break Magazine.

Seismic inversion transforms reflectivity data into layer property which adds valuable interpretive benefits for reservoir characterization. Although seismic inversion is routinely conducted in reservoir interpretation projects, there are still pitfalls in using this technology.

If not careful, risks exist which may lead to incorrect estimation of reservoir properties and in the worst case to wrong drilling. In this paper by Dr. Xin-Quan Ma, a model-driven inversion is used as an example to devise a practical workflow for typical post-stack inversion projects.

The devised workflow consists of nine steps:

log calibration
selection of a seismic trace near a well
well tie analysis
wavelet estimation
seismic amplitude calibration
low frequency model building
inversion job parameterization
volume inversion
interpretation.

The technical background of all steps is reviewed and methods of problem solving presented. Emphasis is placed on how to quality control each stage of a multi-step process so that uncertainty is reduced to a minimum.

With careful data preparation and job parameterization, model-driven inversion produces both absolute and relative impedances, useful for more accurate stratigraphic interpretation and reservoir property determination.

The aim of the article is to develop a practical workflow for post-stack seismic inversion projects.

Emphasis is placed on explaining why we need those steps and how to quality control them in order to get best possible results from inversion. Simulated Annealing Inversion as an inversion algorithm (SA Inversion) tends to illustrate any typical problems arising from model-driven inversion projects and also tends to show the methods to tackle those problems.

For technical aspects of SA inversion, please refer to the following paper by Ma, availiable on our Technical Publications page.

The Practical Workflow for model-driven Seismic Inversion paper can be obtained here.