Geostatistical History Matching Conditioned to Seismic Data

Abstract

History matching is a highly non-linear inverse problem where by perturbing subsurface models (e.g. porosity, permeability models) one tries to match the dynamic responses of this Earth model with the observed production data of a given hydrocarbon reservoir. Geostatistical seismic inversion is a geophysical inverse problem where by creating a set of porosity or facies models one minimizes a mismatch function between the observed and the synthetic seismic data created from simulated acoustic and elastic impedance models. In spite of their different physical principles, both of these inverse problems have the same parameter and solution space. We propose herein a global geostatistical iterative inversion methodology, where the retrieved subsurface models match simultaneously the observed seismic reflection and the reservoir production data.