The truck-mounted PL14 unit has inspired both interest and scepticism, as all new exploration tools do. It involves drilling a handful of copper-clad electrodes into the ground, and then firing a shot and measuring the seismic event as the wave travels down.

"The seismic event ultimately turns into a minute electric event if there are resistive liquids below the ground," Kraemer said at a seminar late last year.

The technology was developed in the early 1990s many years ago to detect water, but over the past two years has been refined and commercialised for oil, gas and geothermal exploration.

It works by detecting liquids at depths down to 2000m - oil, gas and fresh water. The system does not see salt water.

While still a relatively new technology, Kraemer has tested the PL 14 at an oil field in Texas.

The Lydia field was sampled over multiple locations 65m apart.

Kraemer started at a depleted part of the field and moved across it, taking around 80 soundings to create 2D models.

"We saw very little potential, which we expected, so we moved away from the depleted field and we started to identify areas across the field. Ultimately they drilled a well where out soundings suggested there was oil and it was productive in the Austin Chalk and some of the other zones around 1400m," he said.

The PL16 system shows a clear correlation with resistivity and gamma logs from another explorer in Texas.

The system seems to work the best in areas with porosity, and isn't probably ideal for tight zones, and is still to be tested in an area such as the Bakken Shale, which is naturally fractured.

The PL14 has been designed to assess fairly shallow targets, and is being refined to 3000m.

"Once that iteration is done, we will have to move to a completely different platform to go to the next phase, which will hopefully add another 50% in depth (down to 4500m)," he said.

"We are working slowly so we can assess the quality of the data and make sure what comes out is useable. If we can't model because there is too much noise, it's no good. It needs to be accurate and detailed."

The system can be configured for depth and time, to better account for the hardness of the rocks.

One of the PL14 unit's big hands is a US geophysicist uses the system after a simple 2D survey to help confirm the presence of oil, and his strike rate so far is 100%: six of six wells have been economically viable.

Even Kraemer admits that's probably too good to be true, but he believes it speaks to the tool's potential as yet another way to de-risk exploration prospects.

Kraemer said mid-level oil companies could use the system to high grade prospects.

"Where we can help at the smaller scale developers … 160 acres, we can do a strait assessment pretty easily at an economical price, but the mid-range companies would find it as a complement," he said.

There is also some interest in changing work programs to use the cheaper PL14 survey rather than other, more expensive geophysics - and the governments have indicated they are receptive, but only if the system can be proven to work.

Kraemer says around 40 acres can be covered in a single day with around one acre per sounding, at around $US9500 per day, including mobilisation, for short-term projects, with cheaper pricing for larger projects, and Australian costs are around $12,000 per day, although Black Ridge is open to strategic alliances or partnerships with oilers companies.

The plan is to continue to test the system on Australian analogues to hopefully prove it works.

The system is also highly flexible, and can be infilled on the fly if there are indications of oil.

There is a minimal environmental impact, so it should be much easier to secure approvals than with seismic.

Black Range's Ed Gilfillan said the system could show where not to drill.

If there is saline water above an oil zone, while work still needs to be done, the seismic event should simply pass through the salt water zone and show up the oil/water zone or zones, with each event sending a signal back to the surface.

Fresh water won't mask oil either, although there is a risk that fresh water and oil zone could look the same, however it can be de-risked by looking at the depth.

Seismoelectric has even been tested on the ocean floor by the original inventors.