Abstract. This study presents a method based on the Gauss–Newton optimization technique for continuous reservoir model updating with respect to production history and time-lapse seismic data in the form of zero offset amplitudes and amplitude versus offset (AVO) gradients. The main objective of the study is to test the feasibility of using these integrated data as input to reservoir parameter estimation problems. Using only production data or zero offset time-lapse seismic amplitudes as observation data in the parameter estimation process cannot properly limit the solution space. The emphasis of this work is to use the integrated data combined with empirical knowledge about rock types from laboratory measurements, to further constrain the inversion process. The algorithm written for this study consists of three parts: the reservoir simulator, the rock physics petro-elastic model and the optimization algorithm. The Gauss–Newton inversion is tested at a 2D semi-synthetic model inspired by real field data from offshore Norway. The algorithm reduces the misfit between the observed and simulated data which make it possible to estimate porosity and permeability distributions. The Gauss–Newton optimization technique is an efficient parameter estimation technique. However, the numerical estimation of the gradient is time consuming, and it can be prohibitive for practical applications. This method is suitable for distributed computing which considerably reduces the total optimization time. The amount of reduction depends mainly on the number of available processors.

Keywords: time-lapse seismic, parameter estimation, simulation based optimization, AVO gradient, zero offset amplitudes

Print publication: Issue 4 (December 2009)
Received 19 February 2009, accepted for publication 14 August 2009
Published 8 September 2009