Geostatistical Inversion - Carbonate Case Studies from Kuwait

This paper presents the successful application of geostatistical inversion to the spatial delineation of thin carbonate reservoir units, otherwise the conventional inversion cannot resolve the fine details beyond seismic bandwidth. Geostatistical inversion provide a quantitative way to integrate the high vertical resolution of well logs with the dense aerial coverage of 3D seismic data using Bayesian inference followed by Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling to produce highly detailed P-impedance and lithotype of the reservoir, which were used to co-simulate the porosity. The results were validated through recently drilled wells, and the match was reasonably good. This paper demonstrates the systematic field studies to understand the merits of geostatistical inversion for the carbonate reservoirs of Mauddud, Minagish Oolite and Ratawi limestone from the three fields of Kuwait.