Geostatistical Seismic Shale Rock Physics AVA Inversion

Abstract

Summary The main goal of reservoir characterization is the description of the subsurface rock properties (i.e. porosity, volume of minerals and fluid saturations). This is commonly done in a sequential, two-step, approach: elastic properties are inferred from seismic inversion, which are then used to compute rock properties by applying calibrated rock physics models. However, this sequential procedure may lead to biased predictions as the uncertainties may not be propagated through the entire process. To overcome these limitations, here we propose the inference of shale rock properties directly from seismic data using a geostatistical direct shale rock physics AVA inversion. The purpose of the proposed geostatistical direct shale rock physics AVA inversion is to extract the properties included in the composition of a shale volume, such as brittleness, TOC and porosity from the seismic reflection data. The proposed method is applied to a real dataset from a Lower Paleozoic shale reservoir in Northern Poland.