Viridien authors win 2025 EAGE award for best paper in First Break

Paris, France | Jun 4, 2025

Viridien congratulates Isabel Espin, Laurene Michou, Nicolas Salaun, Daniela Donno and Diego Carotti on being selected by the EAGE to receive its 2025 Neil Anstey Award for the best paper published in the journal First Break in the past year, in recognition of their paper “Angle-Restricted FWI for Shallow Reservoir Characterisation” (Volume 42, Issue 12, Dec 2024). The paper was co-authored with Øystein Wergeland, Katrine Gotliebsen and Joachim Mispel from Equinor and Ståle Høgden from Vår Energi.

The award-winning paper describes how cutting-edge high-frequency full-waveform inversion (FWI) imaging can significantly improve the imaging and characterization of shallow reservoirs in complex settings like the Barents Sea. This innovative approach harnesses the benefits of FWI Imaging to deliver more reliable angle-dependent seismic reflection attributes for use in reservoir characterization workflows and hence achieve better reservoir understanding.

Unlike traditional seismic workflows, this method can extract high-quality angle-dependent elastic information directly from raw data without the need for a full conventional processing and imaging sequence, providing faster access to reservoir analysis. In this study, a class 3 amplitude versus angle (AVA) response, indicative of a gas reservoir, could be derived directly from raw data.

The advantages are especially clear in this challenging area where conventional imaging workflows struggled with shallow gas pockets and strong multiples that blur or distort the seismic signal. Here, high-frequency FWI Imaging delivered cleaner, more reliable images by utilizing the full wavefield to resolve these complex effects more accurately.

Peter Whiting, Head of Geoscience, Viridien, said: “This impressive work by Espin et al. is another example of the exciting innovations our teams of experts continue to bring to subsurface imaging. The advances we make in our proprietary technologies, like acoustic and elastic FWI, bring better reservoir insights to operators. This is also an example where the latest technology doesn't take longer to execute - increased HPC power with appropriate optimization allows us to accelerate cycle times, providing value through having the right information at the right time.”

Comparison of the amplitude versus angle (AVA) intercept and intercept-gradient cross-product attributes between QPSDM (a and c, respectively) and angle-restricted acoustic FWI Imaging (b and d, respectively) at 100 Hz. The FWI-based intercept exhibits improved resolution and fault continuity. A similar trend, in terms of AVA anomalies, is observed between the QPSDM and the FWI result. (image courtesy of Viridien).