Abstract
This reference is for an abstract only. A full paper was not submittedfor this conference.AbstractShell’s Carbonate Team has been developing a method in which post-stackseismic can be used to estimate average interval matrix permeability incarbonates. The foundation of the technique is a new model, which describesquantitative relationships between sonic velocity, porosity and permeability.This model relates a pore shape factor from the poro-elasticity theory withpermeability from lab measurements. This pore shape factor describes the 3Dpore structure and can be extracted from inverted post-stack seismic data.Additionally, this factor relates to pore connectivity and, therefore, topermeability.After the concept was tested and successfully proven on plug scale, thefirst implementation focused on a large carbonate field in the Middle East.This accumulation had all the ingredients to perform a full field test of theconcept - good thickness for multiple seismic reflections, matrix-dominatedpermeability, single mineralogy (calcite), superb seismic data and enough wellswith good compressional and shear sonic logs.Introducing pore structures in the characterisation of carbonate reservoirsfrom acoustic data helps resolve the ambiguity in porosity/permeabilityprediction. In the test case, we have demonstrated that: 1) the new rockproperty prediction is much more accurate than properties predicted bycommercial inversion packages, 2) pore structure can be extracted from 3- Dpost-stack seismic, 3) a permeability indicator can be estimated from invertedseismic and 4) a permeability indicator volume proved to produce a superiorhistory match against a permeability model constructed from extensive welldata.