Revealing the reservoir: Integrating seismic survey design, acquisition, processing and inversion to optimize reservoir characterisation

Abstract

The escalating cost of drilling wells has meant that first class seismic data quality is essential for delineating reservoirs and identifying new well locations in complex geology. This paper describes an integrated workflow which insured that a new 3D seismic dataset acquired off the North West coast of Australia was designed, acquired, processed and simultaneously inverted to produce enhanced sub-surface image quality over a producing field. A desire for enhanced production required the geological understanding of the oil field to be improved. The poor quality of existing seismic data made it impossible to accurately identify the top and base of the prime volume carrying reservoir. A new seismic survey was designed with the specific requirement of improving the interpretability of the reservoir away from the wells. Both legacy seismic data and well data were used to aid in the design of the optimal seismic acquisition parameters. This along with single sensor technology produced excellent field data which were further enhanced by a high-end processing flow and inversion. In particular, advanced noise and multiple attenuation techniques have revealed the top reservoir and other previously unseen geological structures. Simultaneous AVO inversion was used to produce rock property volumes of Acoustic Impedance and Poisson's Ratio which demonstrated an extremely high correlation with the well logs further proving the quality of the seismic.