An Outcrop-based Detailed Geological Model to Test Automated Interpretation of Seismic Inversion Results

Previously, Tetyukhina et al. (2014) developed a geological and petrophysical model based on the Book Cliffs outcrops that contained eight lithotypes. For reservoir modelling purposes, this model is judged to be too coarse because in the same lithotype it contains reservoir and non-reservoir lithologies. Hence, a new and more detailed geological model has been built based on the principles of sequence stratigraphy and with more emphasis on the reservoir-quality lithologies. Full elastic seismic data has been simulated based on a petrophysical model based on empirical rock-physical relationships. In order to improve the Full Waveform Inversion result, an additional scheme is proposed where the unconstrained seismic inversion result is automatically interpreted in terms of a scenario that represents prior geological information. In this way, thin layers, present in the prior model, can be interpreted from a bandlimited seismic inversion result if they are consistent with the data.