Bayesian Geophysical Basin Modeling with Seismic Kinematics Metrics to Quantify Uncertainty for Pore Pressure Prediction

TL;DR

This paper introduces a faster seismic data assimilation proxy for Bayesian geophysical basin modeling, enabling efficient and accurate pore pressure prediction with uncertainty quantification in sedimentary basins.

Contribution

The study develops and validates seismic traveltimes criteria as computationally efficient proxies, reducing costs while maintaining accuracy in Bayesian basin modeling for pore pressure estimation.

Findings

Fast proxies yield similar uncertainty results as the benchmark

Seismic kinematics criteria improve pore pressure prediction accuracy

Method reduces computational costs significantly

Abstract

Bayesian geophysical basin modeling (BGBM) methodology is an interdisciplinary workflow that incorporates data, geological expertise, and physical processes through Bayesian inference in sedimentary basin models. Its application culminates in subsurface models that integrate the geo-history of a basin, rock physics definitions, well log and drilling data, and seismic information. Monte Carlo basin modeling realizations are performed by sampling from prior probability distributions on facies parameters and basin boundary conditions. After data assimilation, the accepted set of posterior sub-surface models yields uncertainty quantification of subsurface properties. This procedure is especially suitable for pore pressure prediction in a predrill stage. However, the high computational cost of seismic data assimilation decreases the practicality of the workflow. Therefore, we introduce and investigate seismic traveltimes criteria as computationally faster proxies for analyzing the seismic data likelihood when employing BGBM. The proposed surrogate schemes weigh the prior basin model results with the available seismic data with no need to perform expensive seismic depth-migration procedures for each Monte Carlo realization. Furthermore, we apply BGBM in a real field case from the Gulf of Mexico using a 2D section for pore pressure prediction considering different kinematics criteria. BGBM implementation with the novel seismic data assimilation proxies is compared with a computationally expensive benchmark approach. Moreover, we validate and compare the outcomes for predicted pore pressure with mud-weight data from a blind well. The fast proxy of analyzing the depth-positioning of seismic horizons proposed in this work yields similar uncertainty quantification results in pore pressure prediction compared to the benchmark. These fast proxies make the BGBM methodology efficient and practical.