A Seismically-Driven Integrated Reservoir Characterisation for Modelling Purposes: A Green Field Case Study

This paper describes a seismically-driven reservoir characterisation study as a key integrated G&G activity to support the reservoir modelling in the early development stage of a Far East field. The study allowed updating the reservoir model, by including new available information, such as core data, image logs, multi-mineral petrophysical analysis, sedimentological revision, reservoir-scale seismic interpretation, updated seismic velocity model, among others. The geophysical workflow comprises three steps: first, a detailed “seismic petrophysics” approach to define a petro-elastic facies scheme by integrating petrophysical and elastic logs in a cluster analysis procedure; secondly, a simultaneous elastic inversion process and last, a seismic facies classification using Bayesian inference to generate, from inverted data, a set of probabilistic cubes of the reference model. The probabilistic petro-elastic facies volumes were then used as input information for conditioning reservoir property distribution, with the aim of capturing the spatial heterogeneity of the reservoir system, describing quantitatively the lateral facies variations and supporting the interpretation of sedimentological characteristics and corresponding petrophysical behaviour in a 3D domain. This quantitative approach has shown the effectiveness for integrating mutli-disciplinary and multi-scale data to support the decision making process, by optimising the location of new production wells and running more accurate volumetrics.