Reservoir Characterization: Which Rock Physics Input Should You Put?

Abstract

Seismic rock physics is a powerful tool for reservoir characterization. Seismic data has a moderate resolution, but a terrific lateral and volumetric continuity, and may be the main driver for reservoir properties estimation. Reservoir seismic properties, e.g. impedances, velocities and even density, can be extracted from seismic volumes and these properties very often contains a lot of petrophysical and litological information. Nowadays there are some efforts trying to extract the petrophysical information directly from the seismic data volumes, without the intermediate step of seismic property estimation. Nevertheless, these data must be calibrated and validated with similar data obtained from more direct measurements, like sonic logs and laboratory experiments, in order to achieve a good quantitative match, no matter what inversion scheme is used. Some strength, as well as some caveats, of rock physics data will be discussed on this paper. The aim of it is not to suggest any ground truth or rule of thumb, but ratter to provoke the discussion of this interesting subject.