Chalk sediments form an important reservoir for groundwater onshore and for hydrocarbons in the Danish sector of the North Sea. Cross-hole Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) tomography is an efficient method to investigate subtle porosity variations in the chalk. Traditional ray-based inversion techniques provide models that are overly smooth and have relatively low resolution. We present preliminary results from full-waveform inversion of data collected in strongly heterogeneous chalk. The resolution of the tomograms has improved significantly compared to models obtained from travel-time tomography. The new models also reflect the variability seen in 1D drill core analysis. The results indicate that full-waveform inversion is a well-suited inversion technique for high-resolution time-lapse-based flow characterization.


Read More: http://library.seg.org/doi/abs/10.1190/segam2014-1199.1