Reservoir permeability estimation from seismic amplitudes using variational mode decomposition

Abstract A new qualitative Reservoir Permeability estimation approach using variational mode decomposition named RPE-VMD is proposed which directly use seismic amplitude and frequency attributes. The method reveals amplitude anomalies that may reflect details about the heterogenous distribution of reservoir permeability. The main procedure is carried out in the time-frequency domain which generates by using a generalized S transform. Reflection coefficient information is used as seismic amplitude attribute and extracted by using variational mode decomposition combined with mutual information theory from seismic data using the logarithmic spectrum. The dominant frequency extracted in the time-frequency domain is used as seismic frequency attribute for estimating reservoir thickness information. The RPE-VMD approach uses dominant reflection coefficient information from the seismic data combined with reservoir thickness information for permeability estimation. Application of this approach to field data from a sandstone reservoir in China illustrates that it can provide permeability estimation with a high resolution and accuracy. The proposed method directly uses seismic data to measure the reservoir permeability avoiding the need of seismic velocity in the conventional estimation methods.