Borehole‐guided AVO analysis of P‐P and P‐S reflections: Quantifying uncertainty on density estimates

Seismic properties of isotropic elastic formations are characterized by the three parameters: acoustic impedance, Poisson's ratio and density. Whilst the first two are usually well estimated by analysing the amplitude variation with angle (AVA) of reflected P‐P waves, density is known to be poorly resolved. However, density estimates would be useful in many situations encountered in oil and gas exploration, in particular, for minimizing risks in looking ahead while drilling. We design a borehole seismic experiment to investigate the reliability of AVA extracted density. Receivers are located downhole near the targeted reflectors and record reflected P‐P and converted P‐S waves. A non‐linear, wide‐angle‐based Bayesian inversion is then used to access the a posteriori probability distributions associated with the estimation of the three isotropic elastic parameters. The analysis of these distributions suggests that the angular variation of reflected P‐S amplitudes provides additional substantial information for estimating density, thus reducing the estimate uncertainty variance by more than one order of magnitude, compared to using only reflected P‐waves.