Automatic, geologic layer-constrained well-seismic tie through blocked dynamic warping

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Well-log-to-seismic tying is a key step in many interpretation workflows for oil and gas exploration. Synthetic seismic traces from the wells are often manually tied to seismic data; this process can be very time consuming and, in some cases, inaccurate. Automatic methods, such as dynamic time warping (DTW), can match synthetic traces to seismic data. Although these methods are extremely fast, they tend to create interval velocities that are not geologically realistic. We have described the modification of DTW to create a blocked dynamic warping (BDW) method. BDW generates an automatic, optimal well tie that honors geologically consistent velocity constraints. Consequently, it results in updated velocities that are more realistic than other methods. BDW constrains the updated velocity to be constant or linearly variable inside each geologic layer. With an optimal correlation between synthetic seismograms and surface seismic data, this algorithm returns an automatically updated time-depth curve and an updated interval velocity model that still retains the original geologic velocity boundaries. In other words, the algorithm finds the optimal solution for tying the synthetic to the seismic data while restricting the interval velocity changes to coincide with the initial input blocking. We have determined the application of the BDW technique on a synthetic data example and field data set.