2D Inversions of 3D Marine CSEM Data

A combination of 3D forward simulations and 2D and 3D inversions have been used to demonstrate the appropriateness of applying 2D interpretation on data due to a 3D resistivity anomaly for a marine CSEM survey. This study is done in the first instance on a simple benchmark model. The results of synthetic modeling and inversion tests quantitatively show that the most important factors to properly use 2D inversions to characterize a 3D anomaly are: magnitude of the target’s CSEM response, the geometry, and the distance between its edge and the survey line.