Hybrid inversion techniques used to derive key elastic parameters:

A case study from the Nile Delta

R. ROBERTS, J. BEDINGFIELD, and D. PHELPS, Apache Egypt Companies, Cairo, Egypt
A. LAU, Apache Corp., Houston, USA
B. GODFREY, S. VOLTERRANI, F. ENGELMARK, and K. HUGHES, WesternGeco, Cairo, Egypt

T his case study reviews the workflow and the results

achieved in terms of updated development drilling plans
from a 1500-km2 prestack inversion project over a West
Mediterranean Deep Marine Concession in the Nile Delta.
Four successful exploration and one appraisal well have been
drilled to date on this concession. Figure 1 shows the loca-
tion of the concession (red box) in the offshore Nile Delta,
and indicates the locations and field names of the discov-
eries to date. The 3D survey over this concession was
recorded using long offsets (6000 m). Information contained
in these offsets has been used to try and obtain rock prop-
erty estimates that may help distinguish lithology and fluid
types in order to high grade drilling locations and help
build more reliable reservoir models.
The main inversion objective was to improve the exist-
ing reservoir model to help create an optimum development
plan for the gas-charged complex of channel and levee sands
discovered in the block. This was enabled by the generation Figure 1. West Mediterranean Concession outlined by the red box. The
of 3D cubes of three elastic parameters: P-impedance, four prospects/discoveries targeted by the project are shown.
Poisson’s ratio, and density. These data were then used to
derive additional 3D cubes of petrophysical parameters
such as water saturation and net-to-gross.
Successful seismic inversion requires a high signal-to-
noise ratio and a wide bandwidth. In this case study, a
hybrid inversion technique was used to derive the seismic
attributes. The technique combines full waveform prestack
inversion and three-term AVO inversion. The project was
focused only on the Pliocene interval where gas-charged type
3 AVO sands are present; it was not considered reliable for
the Miocene and below where the sands are deposited below
a high-velocity anhydrite layer. To date, the Pliocene has been
an amplitude-supported play in the area (Figure 2), and this
approach had a 100% drilling success rate (five out of five).
However, it was clear that amplitudes alone did not pro-
vide the complete story and we will provide evidence of that
in the course of this study.
Figure 2. Red amplitude anomalies indicating channel fan complexes are
Rock physics summary. A detailed rock physics analysis was draped over a depth structure map; initial drilling targets were selected
conducted using the extensive log suites from the five exist- where these amplitude anomalies have closure.
ing wells. The sandstone reservoirs are Pliocene, deposited
as channel sands and levees. The channel sands form high- tivariate linear regression was derived for water saturation.
quality reservoirs showing high amplitude and a type 3 It was found that including density, in addition to P-imped-
AVO response. The levee deposits are laminated and seis- ance and VP/VS, significantly improved the fit.
mically transparent. Depth of burial is 3000-5000 ft below In this area, the laminated sands are believed to contain
mudline for all five wells. Therefore, compaction effects are considerable volumes of producible gas. The reservoir-qual-
quite large over relatively small depth intervals. The com- ity sands are interbedded with similar but nonpermeable
paction trends were estimated for P- and S-impedance and shales, and the net-to-gross (N/G) is estimated at about
density, and subsequently removed to allow a depth-inde- 30%. Layering is typically on a centimeter scale. The area is
pendent analysis of the lithologies. rich in iron minerals such as siderite, pyrite, and glauconite,
Historically, our industry has not estimated in-situ gas with higher concentrations of these minerals apparently in
saturation accurately. The problem originates in the non- the nonpermeable layers. The average grain density is vari-
linear effect that gas saturation has on seismic data in high- able, but on average believed on the order of 2.75 g/cm3 and
porosity clastics; a small amount of gas creates strong effects the heavy minerals also exhibit high bulk and shear mod-
on P-velocity and reflectivity. Density change is linear as a uli. The combination of a heavy and rigid matrix makes the
function of saturation; hence, it is the key to improved esti- average elastic properties of these moderate-to-low N/G
mation of gas saturation. sediments similar to shales when gas-charged and, there-
Based on the well elastic and petrophysical data, a mul- fore, makes them more difficult to characterize.

86 THE LEADING EDGE JANUARY 2005

 Three log types were consid-
ered necessary for a successful eval-
uation of the laminated layers:

• FMI to obtain N/G

• anisotropic resistivity to derive
the water saturation (Sw) in the
permeable layers
• elemental capture spectroscopy
(ECS) to determine the miner-
alogy, grain density, moduli,
accurate clay volume, and type
of clay

Previous well calibrations

within the concession showed that
the following rock/fluid classes
could be discriminated by refer-
ence to seismically derived attrib-
utes. The approximate values are
shown in parenthesis for each class.

• clean gas sands = low P-wave

impedance, low VP/VS ratio
(~11 000, <2.2) Figure 3. Well Abu Sir 2X was expected to find commercial quantities of gas through the entire ampli-
• clean water sands = high P- tude package illustrated. AVO information (near- and far-range stacks in inset) also supported this
wave impedance, intermediate predrill assessment. High gas saturations were found in the upper sand, but low gas saturations were
VP/VS ratio (~16 000, >2.5) encountered in the lower sand indicated by the blue arrow.
• laminated gas sands = reduced
P-wave impedance and VP/VS
ratio (~13 000, ~2.4)
• shales = higher P-wave imped-
ance, high VP/VS ratio (>14 000,
>2.5)

Pliocene reservoir complexity.

Figure 3 is a good example of why
conventional amplitude informa-
tion alone does not tell this story.
Well Abu Sir 2X was drilled with
the expectation of finding com-
mercial hydrocarbons throughout
the entire high-amplitude interval.
However, the second leg of the high
amplitude related interval (see
arrow) was associated with low
gas-saturated sand. The reservoir
properties of this sand were simi-
lar to the pay sands above it but the
gas saturation was half the level of
the overlying sands. As is known,
a small amount of gas creates
strong effects on P-velocity and
reflectivity. Low and high gas-sat- Figure 4. Crossplot of V /V versus P-impedance. Color scale is water saturation ranging from 8% (red)
P S
urated reservoirs can have similar to 100% (blue).
VP and VP/VS ratios. Density infor-
mation would be helpful to distin-
guish the two cases; however, variations due to lithology can When crossplotting some attributes derived in this study,
be much greater than those associated with fluid changes, and, different fluid saturations clearly plot in different quad-
hence, the latter can be masked. This zone had looked very rants. In Figure 4, the crossplotted interval is shown on the
prospective from an AVO standpoint, as shown in the near- well log on the right (from Abu Sir 2X). The plot on the left
and far-offset stacks. shows clean gas sands in red, laminated sands in orange-
This result caused concern that much of the prospective green, and wet (brine) sands in blue.
area may sit below the established gas-water contact (GWC) Figure 5 shows a density attribute section derived from
as found by Abu Sir 2X. Further work was needed to high- the surface seismic data with an insert showing the density
grade or further risk the amplitude-related areas elsewhere curve from the well log data at Abu Sir 2X. Reds indicate
within the field boundaries. low density values (<2.0 g/cm3), yellows are intermediate

JANUARY 2005 THE LEADING EDGE 87

 reformulation of the Aki and
Richards AVO equation was used
to invert for the three coefficients
of a second-order polynomial in
sin2θ. Combining the three coeffi-
cients with a background VP/VS
model results in band-limited
reflectivity cubes for P-impedance,
Poisson’s ratio, and density. These
were submitted to a full bandwidth
inversion, where the seismic ampli-
tudes were calibrated to the corre-
sponding well data, yielding
absolute P-impedance, Poisson’s
ratio, and density cubes. Note that
the reliability of three-term AVO
inversion is subject to true relative
amplitude preservation, appropri-
ate higher-order anisotropy move-
out correction, effective multiple
suppression, minimal mode con-
version in the gathers, and high
Figure 5. Density section extracted over the same line as in Figure 3. Note the different response between signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio in the
the low and high gas-saturated zones. gather data.
It was observed that the esti-
mation of density was significantly
improved by including angles of
incidence up to 60° in the AVO
analysis. While the uncertainty of
the density estimate is generally
larger than for the other AVO
attributes, the match between the
seismically derived density and the
well data is good. This adds sup-
port that the derived density val-
ues are trustworthy.
Full waveform prestack inver-
sion (FWPI) uses a forward mod-
eling methodology to transform
pseudowells into synthetic offset
data. A comparison is then made
between the actual seismic data
with the synthetic data; the
pseudowells are updated to opti-
mize the match. A genetic algo-
rithm, outlined in Figure 7, is used
Figure 6. Hybrid inversion workflow used in this study. to perform several thousand itera-
tions (perturbations) to find the
values (2.0 - 2.1), and greens/blues are higher density val- optimum elastic parameters to match the synthetic to real data.
ues (>2.1). When compared to the conventional seismic line The initial input is guided by the rock physics model and
in Figure 3, the low gas-saturated sand appears distin- stacking velocities. In Figure 7, the upper right image shows
guishable from the conventional pay found above it in Abu predicted versus actual results for one FWPI point, with the
Sir 2X. yellow overlay illustrating the error bars. Density is usually
the most problematic property to predict accurately. In this
Hybrid inversion workflow. The seismic data were pre- project, 150 FWPI locations were used, clustered in and around
processed using a true amplitude sequence that included the four prospects/discoveries identified previously on the
prestack Kirchhoff time migration. The cable length was suf- concession map. The derived VP/VS trends were used as input
ficient to allow angles of incidence up to 60° at the reser- for the AVO inversion. Together with the well data, the
voir level. Data quality was deemed very good and well pseudowells were used to build low-frequency models that
suited for three-term AVO analysis. were merged with the band-limited data to create the three
Figure 6 shows the main components of the inversion final full-bandwidth inversion data cubes.
workflow used in this project. It involves combining full Further petrophysical volumes (Sw and N/G) were sta-
waveform prestack inversion (run at discrete locations) with tistically derived from the elastic volumes using regression
more traditional AVO inversion (run continuously through- formulae derived in the rock physics part of the project. It
out the volume). Three-term AVO is preferable to two-term should be noted that Sw represents the bulk water satura-
AVO because it allows the determination of density in addi- tion, which includes nonnet components of the reservoir rock.
tion to P-impedance and Poisson’s ratio. The Pan and Gardner

88 THE LEADING EDGE JANUARY 2005

 ual NMO. The gather data were
‘flattened’ using an automated
event picker that is constrained to
be spatially consistent—this not
only ensures that the structural
detail provided by the high tem-
poral resolution near-angle stack is
unchanged before and after flat-
tening, but also prevents cycle skips
that commonly plague automatic
pickers. The bottom plot in Figure
8 shows the result of applying this
flattening process. In general, this
technique can be applied to the off-
set and resultant angle gathers.
The flattening of the moveout
means the kinematic effects of
anisotropy are eliminated without
explicit knowledge of the aniso-
tropy parameters. However, aniso-
tropy will also contribute to another
kinematic aspect, where the offset-
to-angle relationship is increasingly
Figure 7. Full waveform prestack inversion workflow and an example result. affected with increasing offsets.
This, together with the dynamic
effect of anisotropy, will affect the
amplitudes with increasing offsets.
The calibration of the seismic to the
well data helps compensate for the
effects introduced by anisotropy.

Well calibration. In order to decide

how well the AVO seen on the
actual seismic data matches that
predicted from the well logs, com-
parisons were made between pre-
dicted and actual gathers (Figure
9). The match in Figure 9 appears
good and the comparison (lower
part of Figure 9) of the seismic
amplitude at the top and base reser-
voir with the corresponding result
from the synthetic amplitude con-
firms this. The synthetic modeled
result is shown in red and blue, the
real data in purple and yellow. Note
that three neighboring gathers from
the seismic data are shown. In gen-
eral, the agreement was good and
it was decided that global ampli-
tude calibration scalars to match
the seismic AVO with those mod-
eled from the well data were not
required for this project. The results
for the predicted versus actual gath-
ers around the other four wells were
Figure 8. Residual gather flattening is essential for accurate AVO analysis. (top) Typical gathers before
consistent with this result.
flattening. (bottom) Gathers after flattening.
Well-tie results. Figure 10 shows
Residual gather flattening. AVO, as implemented in this pro- the Poisson’s ratio, P-impedance, and density results from
ject, is a sample-by-sample process and as such it is very the well logs (filtered to 70 Hz) in red and the extracted val-
important to have flat gathers as input. The intermediate to ues from the final inversion cubes in blue. Part of the rea-
far offsets supply most of the density information (angles son for the good match is because the low-frequency
between 45 and 60°); therefore, the angle gathers must be as component came from the well information, but the high-
flat as possible. Although apparent anisotropic corrections frequency component came from the seismic data.
have been applied to these data (Figure 8 top), there is still There are some areas of mismatch in the estimates (e.g.,
some uncorrected anisotropy in the data as well as some resid- seismic data from gas sands underestimates the change in

JANUARY 2005 THE LEADING EDGE 89

 Poisson’s ratio compared to the
well log data) but, generally, the
match is encouraging. In particu-
lar, the density estimates from the
seismic data had a good correla-
tion with the well data.

Attribute maps. Figure 11 shows

map views of three attributes
(amplitude, P-impedance, and
density) extracted over the non-
commercial gas interval around
Abu Sir 2X. The conventional
amplitude extraction shows an
area of high amplitude around
Abu Sir 2X which is associated
with the low gas-saturated inter-
val, whereas the density and P-
impedance extractions show this
area to be less prospective. All
three extractions suggest com-
mercial hydrocarbon accumula-
tions at the proposed Abu Sir 3X
location, which is structurally
below the GWC found in Abu Sir
2X.
Figure 12 is a water saturation
map over Abu Sir Field. The water
saturation attribute is effectively a
meta-attribute that uses P-imped-
ance, Poisson’s ratio, and density
to estimate the water saturation.
Analysis of the seismic attributes
derived in this project showed that
using all three elastic attributes
(P-impedance, Poisson’s ratio, and
density) provided a better match
with the wells for water saturation
compared to using P-impedance
and VP/VS only. It is felt that using
these attributes together would
allow discrimination of commer-
cial gas from fizz gas ahead of the
drill bit.
Figure 13 illustrates a practical
result of the study. The conven-
tional amplitude extractions over
the Pliocene interval targeted by Figure 9. (top) Modeled versus actual data comparison for the Abu Sir 2X well. (bottom) Comparison of
the El King 2X well were compa- the picked amplitudes at both the top and base of the gas-charged sand.
rable in strength. Extractions from
the attribute data indicate the eastern levee should have bet- The main challenges in further improving the reservoir
ter reservoir properties (water saturation is shown in Figure model building process include:
13) than the western levee. Based on this information, the
decision was made to move the proposed location to test • facies interpretation and calibration
this better interval. • multiattribute volume interpretation
• data quality, particularly high-angle (long-offset) seismic
Conclusions. The project has highlighted many benefits of the data
workflow outlined, including: • relative amplitude preservation through the acquisition
and processing steps
• improved lithology and fluid discrimination • improve the low-frequency model design in geometri-
• estimation of gas saturation cally complex reservoir systems
• improved discrimination of low gas saturation by includ- • assigning uncertainty estimates to final output products
ing density
• reservoir property prediction While no single technology provides all the answers to
• constraints on reserve estimates the problems geoscientists face, it is the opinion of the
• improved reservoir characterization authors that elastic impedance inversion technology pro-
• optimized field development vides valuable information that will help our industry

90 THE LEADING EDGE JANUARY 2005

Figure 10. P-impedance, Poisson’s
ratio, and density comparisons for
Abu Sir, Al Bahig, and El Max
discoveries. Blue curves are predic-
tions from seismic data and red
curves are well data.

Figure 11.
Amplitude, density,
and P-impedance
extractions over the
zone indicated in
the well log. The
large anomaly in the
lower left of the
images is actually
downdip of the
drilled wells.
However, the den-
sity supports the
interpretation that
the downdip area
has high gas satura-
tion where well Abu
Sir 3X is planned.

JANUARY 2005 THE LEADING EDGE 91

 become more successful, in both
the exploration and development
phases. The ability to differentiate
between low gas saturation and
economic gas is of particular
importance to the industry, and
we think that three-term hybrid
inversion is a good approach to
help resolve that issue.

Suggested reading. “Hybrid seis-

mic inversion: A reconnaissance tool
for deepwater exploration” by
Mallick et al. (TLE, 2000). “Wave-
form gather inversion and attribute-
guided interpolation: A two-step
approach to log prediction” by Lau
et al. (TLE, 2002). “Reservoir
description using full waveform
prestack inversion” by Mallick and
Benabentos (TLE, 2002). The Basic
Equations of Plane Elastic Wave
Figure 12. Water saturation map over the Abu Sir discovery. Yellow/orange indicate high gas saturation,
and blue indicates higher water saturation levels. Existing wells are shown with red dots. The proposed Reflection and Scattering Applied
well Abu Sir 3X is shown with black outline. to AVO Analysis by Pan and
Gardner (Annual Progress Review 19,
Seismic Acoustic Laboratory,
University of Houston, 1987). TLE

Acknowledgments: Apache Egypt would

like to thank our partners, RWE DEA and
BP Egypt, for permission to publish this
article. We also recognize Don Westacott
for his efforts to generate the petrophysi-
cal estimates that were used in this study,
Dave Jennette for his seismic facies analy-
sis, Jim Keggin from BP Egypt and
Manfred Boeckmann from RWE Dea for
their involvement and assistance to ensure
this project was a success. Apache Egypt
would also like to thank the Egyptian
General Petroleum Corporation for their
support of this project.

Corresponding author:
Ron.Roberts@egy.apachecorp.com

Figure 13. Water saturation map over the El King Pliocene and Miocene discovery. Based on this map,
the proposed well has been moved to target the eastern levee of this channel/levee complex.

92 THE LEADING EDGE JANUARY 2005