Towards a better seismic to well tie in complex media

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Abstract
The conventional approach for seismic to well tying has proven to be of high efficiency in most cases when the basic ingredients, as documented by White (1998), are met: high quality seismic data and well logs, and near‐vertical wells. Structural complexity can considerably affect the result of the seismic to well calibration process. Highly dipping strata, highly deviated wells, rapid lateral velocity variations, or anisotropy lie in many cases behind a poor seismic to well tie. In this paper, we study the various parameters that stand in the way of a good tie in complex media. In a first stage, we used a highly realistic modelling‐imaging chain to better understand “where, how and why” the synthetics computed from the well differ from the seismic data. Starting from the simplest case and complexifying the structural model in various ways, we analyse where and when the traditional approach fails. Conclusions will be drawn from this study and various examples will be presented.