The discovery of up to 100 billion barrels has the potential to dwarf North Sea production but just a fraction is accessible.

The estimated size of an oil find near Gatwick Airport has been upgraded to 100 billion barrels, though extraction may be limited to just 3% of the total.

The surprise announcement was made by UK Oil & Gas Investments, which said the Horse Hill-1 well in the Weald Basin was now thought to hold 158 million barrels per square mile.

In May 2014, the British Geological Survey estimated the Weald Basin to hold around 4.4 billion barrels of shale oil.

Stephen Sanderson, the CEO of UK Oil and Gas Investments described the find as a possible "world class" resource with the potential for "significant daily oil production."

He said: "Drilling the deepest well in the basin in 30 years, together with the ability to use concepts, techniques and technology unavailable in the 1980s, has provided new cutting-edge data and interpretations to comprehensively change the understanding of the area's potential oil resources."

The UK currently produces 770,000 barrels of oil per day, compared to 11.1 million in the United States and 11.7 million in Saudi Arabia.

Source: news.sky.com

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