Austrian oil and gas group OMV announced Tuesday it discovered an "important" oil reserve in south-central Sudan, according to Reuters.
"OMV Exploration has made a series of impressive discoveries in the last few months, but Thar Jath has the potential to be the biggest discovery by far", the company said.
OMV said its wholly-owned subsidiary OMV (Sudan) Exploration GmbH had made the find as part of a consortium led by Swedish Lundin subsidiary Lundin Sudan Ltd, Reuters said.
The Thar Jath 1 drilling exploration was the first one carried out by this consortium in block 5A in Sudan, which has the potential to produce 4,620 barrels of crude oil per day, the agency said.
Although Sudan is considered to be vastly under-explored, it has been a producer of oil and gas for a number of years, said an online study by Mbendi.com.
Sudan has three refineries and imports both refined product and crude oil.
The completion of a new refinery has made Sudan largely self sufficient and able to export refined as well as crude products, said the study, adding that Sudan still needs to import jet fuel however.
The country's oil reserves are estimated at between 600 million and 1.2 billion barrels with recoverable reserves estimated at greater than 800 million barrels. The country is also rich in natural gas with reserves estimated at 3 trillion cubic feet – Albawaba.com
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