Lithology and fluid prediction from simultaneous seismic inversion over Sandfish field, Niger Delta, Nigeria

Seismic inversion has been widely practiced in the oil and gas industry because it generates broad bandwidth of impedance data which maximizes vertical resolution and minimizes tuning effects. The lack of accurate prediction of lithology and fluid content of subtle features identified in seismic data acquired over the Sandfish field, Niger Delta, Nigeria necessitated the use of seismic inversion. In this paper, simultaneous seismic inversion is adopted to integrate seismic and well data for quantitative interpretation and uncertainty assessment of the subsurface reservoirs in the Sandfish field. Three Sandfish (Sfn) wells with the required petrophysical logs, check-shot data, high quality 3D seismic data of five angle stacks (6–12°, 12–18°, 18–26°, 26–32°, and 32–42°) were used for the analysis. A feasibility study including cross-plots of petrophysical and elastic properties from well data was first carried out to establish rock property relationships in the interval of interest. Biot-Gassmann fluid substitution analysis was also used to reveal sensitivity of rock properties to pore-fill type. Low frequency (0–2 Hz) models were generated from interpolation of high-cut-filtered P-sonic, S-sonic, and density logs guided by interpreted seismic horizons. The low frequency models were used to broaden the spectrum to estimate elastic volumes. The five partial angle stacks were simultaneously inverted using Jason’s Rock-Trace® inversion software which iterated trial inversions until the model sufficiently matched the seismic data. The inverted P-impedance (Z P ), Simpedance (Z S ), and density (ρ) were used to derive Poisson’s ratio (σ), volume of sand (Vsand), lambda-rho (λ ρ ), and mu-rho (µ ρ ). The cross-plot of λ ρ with µ ρ from well data looks similar to that from inverted results. Sands and shales are discriminated on the basis of sands having low values of µρ. Hydrocarbon-bearing sands are differentiated from water-bearing sands and shales on the basis of having lowest values of λ ρ . The Biot-Gassmann fluid substitution analysis at reservoir N-01 reveals typical class III amplitude variation with angle (AVA) responses for low-impedance hydrocarbon sands. The lithology and fluid prediction maps extracted from Vsand and σ at the N-01 seismic horizon show variation in lithology and fluid types for the entire volume. The inversion products reveal heterogeneities in the reservoirs away from well control validated by a blind well test. Hence, the study shows