Joint Bayesian wavelet and well-path estimation in the impedance domain

We addressed the problem of the well-to-seismic tie as a Bayesian inversion for the wavelet and well path in the impedance domain. The result of the joint inversion is a set of wavelets for multiple angle stacks, and a corresponding well path. The wavelet optimally links the impedance data along the well to the seismic data along the optimized well path in the seismic time domain. Starting with prior distribution for wavelet and well path, the method calculates the posterior distribution of conditioning the prior distributions with the seismic and well-log data. This is done by iteratively inverting the seismic data with the current wavelet, to obtain an impedance cube around the well. In a second step, the seismic impedances are projected onto the well path. By minimizing the misfit between the inverted seismic impedances and the impedances derived from the well log, the wavelet and well path are optimized. Comparing the well and seismic data in the impedance domain enables the method to work on short and noisy well logs. Another advantage of this method is its ability to derive wavelets for multiple angle stacks and multiple well locations simultaneously. We tested the method on synthetic and real data examples. The algorithm performed well in the synthetic examples, in which we had control over the modeling wavelet, and the wavelets derived for a real data example showed consistently good seismic-to-well ties for six angle stacks and seven wells. The main algorithm we developed was aimed to linearize the problem. We compared the posterior distribution of the linearized result with a sampling-based result in a real data example and found good agreement.