Stanford Rock Physics Laboratory - Gary Mavko

Example 4D Feasibility Study

Summary of Some Rock

Physics Aspects of 4D Seismic

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Example 4D Feasibility Study

Update model
Reservoir management decisions

Reservoir Comparison with

modeling field
Steps involved in 4D seismic
monitoring
reservoir performance

Flow Synthetic seismic

simulation imaging
Rock physics
modeling of
elastic properties

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Example 4D Feasibility Study

Rock Physics 4D Modeling Steps

Model-Building
• Build geologic reservoir model:
lithology, porosity, perm at each pixel
• Specify reservoir fluid properties:
gravity, GOR, salinity, etc.
• Assign Vp, Vs, and density to each pixel
of geologic model for reference fluid

Upscale and Flow Simulate

Rock Physics Mapping to Seismic – at

each time step and each pixel:
• Simulator predicts P, T, So, Sw, Sg, GOR
• Model K, ρ of water, oil, gas
• Compute “average” fluid properties
• downscale/upscale?
• Use Gassmann to update Vp, Vs, density
• Adjust Vp, Vs for changes in P

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Example 4D Feasibility Study

Reservoir Monitoring Analysis

 Assessing feasibility
 Interpreting data after acquisition

Example feasibility study:

 Realistic synthetic data

 Based on North Sea:

– Braided river channels

– 5 km by 5 km, 2 faults
– 24 production wells and 17 water injectors

Study was performed by various groups at Stanford:

Geophysics:

Biondo Biondi, David Lumley, Gary Mavko, Tapan

Mukerji, James Rickett
Petroleum Engineering:

Clayton Deutsch, Runar Gundesø, Marco Thiele

SRB, SEP, SCRF, SUPRI-B

Chevron, Norsk-Hydro

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Example 4D Feasibility Study

Reservoir Model

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Example 4D Feasibility Study

Geologic/Geostatistical Modeling

Hierarchical object-based approach

– Define stratigraphic layers
– Model channel sand/shale facies
– Assign porosity/permeability within facies

 3 layers with net:gross = 0.8, 0.4, 0.6

 Within channel sands φmean = 23%

 200 million geological modelling cells

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Example 4D Feasibility Study

Hierarchical Modeling

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Example 4D Feasibility Study

Rock Physics

Lithologies and Fluids

1. Porosity from geologic modeling
2. Vp-Vs-φ-permeability relations
3. Saturations and pressures from flow simulation
4. Gassmann for fluid substitution

 Scaling and Gridding

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Example 4D Feasibility Study

Rock Physics Relations

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Example 4D Feasibility Study

Flow Simulation

PVT-properties and relative permeabilities from

a North-Sea dataset
 Faults as non-nearest neighbor connections
(sealing and non-sealing)
Simulation run for 3 years: 6 months primary
production 2.5 years with water injection
Computationally intensive: importance of scale-
up

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Example 4D Feasibility Study

Flow Simulation Grid

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Example 4D Feasibility Study

Gas and Water Saturations

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Example 4D Feasibility Study

Seismic Modeling

• Scattering using first-order Born approximation

- Plane-layer methods cannot deal with
heterogeneities
- Finite difference methods too slow
• Amplitudes from Rayleigh scattering

• Survey design
- Area: 2.4 km x 3 km
- Wavelet: 45 Hz
- Offsets: 0 km and 3 km
- Completed at t = 0 and t = 3 years
• Constant offset migration preserving true relative
amplitudes

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Example 4D Feasibility Study

4-D Seismic

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Example 4D Feasibility Study

4-D Seismic

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Example 4D Feasibility Study

4-D Seismic

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Example 4D Feasibility Study

4-D Seismic AVO Effects

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Example 4D Feasibility Study

General Issues

• Different data formats and

coordinates
• Integration of expertise, not
just data

Rock Physics Issues

 Rock/fluid properties
 Scales of saturation
 Frequency effects
 Upscaling

Seismic Imaging Issues

 Survey Repeatability
 Resolution
 AVO information
 Acquisition geometry
 Differential seismic attributes

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