Norway’s Statoil announced yesterday it has discovered a new oil reserve in the North Sea.

The state-controlled oil company said the find in the Geitungen field has an equivalent of 140 to 270 million barrels of recoverable oil.

The discovery was made near the Johan Sverdrup field, Norway’s largest oil find since 1974, which is currently estimated to hold between 1.7-3.3 billion barrels of oil.

Gro Haatvedt, Statoil’s Senior Vice President for exploration in Norway said: “A new oil discovery in the Johan Sverdrup area, in the mature part of the North Sea, reinforces Statoil’s faith in the exploration potential of the Norwegian continental shelf.”