Airborne Electromagnetics can be applied to shallow on-shore hydrocarbon exploration, to targets such as Oil sands, Tar sands, or Shale gas. In few cases  it can detect directly the reservoir, in other instances it maps resistivity anomalies above the target, resulting from geochemical alterations. However, it can always produce a detailed and robust model of the hydrogeology of the units above the hydrocarbon play. Such knowledge is demanded for a number of applications linked to exploration, from Geotechnical, to mine safety, to groundwater management.

It is important to realize that a successful application of AEM to hydrocarbon exploration requires, througout the project, the same level of accuracy needed in groundwater applications, sensibly higher than for metal ore mining. See for example how inaccurate modeling of different paramteres of the AEM system transfer function can lead to incorrect recovery of model parameters of a synthetic 1D resistivity model, and therefore potentially hinder the project.

See also an extract from the presentation given at Geocanada 2010 about possible applications of AEM to hydrocarbon explorations, and keys to their success.