Seismic Screening for Hydrocarbon Prospects using Rock-Physics Attributes

Abstract

Rock-physics templates (RPT), in combination with seismic AVO inversion data, can be used to screen for hydrocarbon prospects during exploration. With the improved quality and increased use of elastic seismic inversion, there has recently been a paradigm change in prospect mapping in the oil industry, and quantitative interpretation has become a widely used jargon. Rock-physics models are essential in that they help in converting elastic parameters from inversion data to reservoir parameters. Rock physics models plays an important role in many of the stages of seismic AVO inversions; including the petrophysical log evaluations, well ties and wavelet estimation, the setting of parameter constraints during the inversion, and the interpretation of the inversion results in terms of reservoir properties. Rock-physics models can also be used to quality check and modify the low-frequency model used in seismic AVO inversion, and to assess the quality and uncertainties of inverted elastic parameters. In this presentation we will demonstrate the use of rock-physics models during the different stages of seismic inversion, and how these can improve our ability to reveal hydrocarbon-associated anomalies.