Deterministic inversion of seismic data in the depth domain

Abstract

Deterministic seismic inversion in the time domain has been used for four decades to derive acoustic impedance from seismic data. This study introduces deterministic inversion of seismic data in the depth domain. PSDM volumes are increasingly common in exploration seismology. However, attempts to tie wells to PSDM volumes are notoriously fraught with problems. Therefore, standard practice converts PSDM output into the time domain for seismic-synthetic correlation, inversion, and reservoir property prediction. It is then necessary to convert reservoir properties back to the depth domain for the development of reservoir models. If the seismic-synthetic match and seismic inversion in the depth domain exploits depth-domain output directly for quantitative analysis, the depth-to-time conversion and time-to-depth conversion steps can be avoided without compromising quality.