Simultaneous Joint Inversion as a Salt Detector in South Gabon Land Exploration

In the special case of non-Gardner bodies (i.e., salts) inside a standard Gardner background setting, simultaneous joint inversion offers a quantitative approach to QC on interpreted layer boundaries for such a formation. Misplacements or boundary errors in salt horizons result in simultaneous joint inversion velocity and density outputs as inconsistencies that may, therefore, indicate layer geometry corrections to otherwise regular solutions. In the presented case, a boundary of validity between a velocity and resistivity positive and negative correlation is detected by simultaneous joint inversion, and used as salt top/bottom edge indicator. For hydrocarbon exploration in the South Gabon sub-basin, because the seismic method alone was failing in salt and subsalt imaging, Perenco hypothesized that gravity data could be utilized to enhance the imaging of pre-salt seismic reflectors by providing additional input for prestack depth migration. Two vintage 2D seismic lines were reprocessed utilizing the technology simultaneous joint inversion technology.