DE0609 : Rock Physics - Integrating Petrophysical, Geomechanics, and Seismic Measurements

This practical and highly-interactive course includes real-life case studies and exercises where participants will be engaged in a series of interactive small groups and class workshops.
Rock Physics is a key component in oil and gas exploration, development and production. It combines concepts and principles from geology, geophysics, petrophysics, applied mathematics and other disciplines. Rock physics provides the empirical relationships, understanding and theory to connect petrophysical, geomechanical and seismic data to the intrinsic properties of rocks, such as mineralogy, porosity, pore shapes, pore fluids, pore pressures, stresses and overall architecture, such as laminations and fractures.
Rock physics is needed to optimize all imaging and reservoir characterization solutions based on geophysical data, and to such data to build mechanical earth models for solving geomechanical problems. An in depth understanding of rock and fluid physics is crucial for any successful seismic attribute interpretation as well as substantially reducing drilling risk. Seismic petrophysics aims to quantitatively link rock properties with reservoir petrophysical properties. This knowledge then allows for careful attribute screening and the creation of rock physics models properly calibrated to local/regional well data, which could then be used to forward model the seismic response. In order to construct geologically realistic rock physics models, the rock physicist needs to be able to identify and correct anomalous and/or missing data from a petrophysical wireline analysis.
This course is designed for participants to understand the sensitivity of elastic waves in the earth to mineralogy, porosity, pore shapes, pore fluids, pore pressures, stresses, and the anisotropy of the rock fabric resulting from the depositional and stress history of the rock, and how to use this understanding in quantitative interpretation of seismic data and in the construction of mechanical earth models.
The course will provide a basic understanding of the relations between elastic and reservoir properties of rocks and demonstrate how rock physics is used to interpret and analyze seismic data. A variety of applications and real data examples is presented. Various rock physics models will be covered and the validity of these models to particular geological scenarios will be discussed.