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Controlled‐source electromagnetics (CSEM) has been used as a de‐risking tool in the hydrocarbon exploration industry. Although there have been successful applications of CSEM, this technique is still not widely used in the industry because the limited types of hydrocarbon reservoirs CSEM can detect. In this paper, we apply the concept of synthetic aperture to CSEM data. Synthetic aperture allows us to design sources with specific radiation patterns for different purposes. The ability to detect reservoirs is dramatically increased after forming an appropriate synthetic aperture antenna. Consequently, the types of hydrocarbon reservoirs that CSEM can detect are significantly extended. Because synthetic apertures are constructed as a data processing step, there is no additional cost for the CSEM acquisition. Synthetic aperture has potential for simplifying and reducing the cost of CSEM acquisition. We show a data example that illustrates the increased sensitivity obtained by applying synthetic aperture CSEM source.

Controlled-source electromagnetics (CSEM) has been used as a derisking tool in the hydrocarbon exploration industry. We apply the concept of synthetic aperture to the lowfrequency electromagnetic field in CSEM. Synthetic aperture sources have been used in radar imaging for many years. Using the synthetic aperture concept, big synthetic sources can be constructed by adding the response to small sources (building blocks) in different ways, and consequently, big sources with different radiation patterns can be created. We show that the detectability of hydrocarbons is significantly enhanced by applying synthetic aperture to CSEM data. More challenging targets such as deep reservoirs (4km belowsea floor) can be detected. The synthetic aperture technique also increases the sensitivity of the field to subsurface targets in the towing streamer acquisition.We also show that a pseudovertical source (orthogonally distributed dipole pairs) can be constructed synthetically, and that the detection capability of this pseudovertical source is increased by applying field steering. The synthetic aperture concept opens a new line of research in CSEM, with the freedom to design suitable synthetic aperture sources for a given purpose.