Elastic impedance inversion in practice

Reservoir characterization should integrate all available seismic, petrophysical and geological information into the volumetric distribution of reservoir properties like porosity, permeability and saturation. Each contributing piece of evidence is incomplete alone. Wells can measure many reservoir properties at high vertical resolution, but offer only sparse sampling laterally, often at considerable expense. Seismic data provides nearly continuous lateral sampling at relatively low cost, but with much less vertical resolution. It also measures key reservoir properties less directly. Inversion for elastic impedance is the latest improvement in a continuing process of integrating seismic and well data for reservoir characterization.