What Will Be the Limitations on Reservoir Geophysics in 2023?

Over the next decade we can look forward to improvements in rock physics, computer power, processing technology and seismic acquisition systems that will give us the possibility to characterise ever more types of reservoir in ever more detail. We will be using our new systems to calibrate our new development seismic against the available well stock. Log data requirements for seismic calibration are significantly different from what is needed for formation evaluation. Inadequate log data will limit how much value a reservoir geophysicist can unlock, even from the most advanced seismic. It is essential that we are able to explain the business impact and data requirements for quantitative seismic interpretation to our colleagues who control well data planning and operations. As an educational exercise, this paper presents a case study of the impact of vertical coverage on wavelet estimation demonstrating that the wavelet estimate rapidly degrades as vertical log extent decreases.