Bahrain Discovered Oil Reserve Of 80 Billion Barrels

Bahrain is an island nation consisting of 30 islands located between Qatar and Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf. The country's economy is more dependant on Petroleum Crude Oil Production. The first oil well which was discovered in 1932 is yielding about 50 thousand barrels per day (1 barrel is approximately equal to 160 litres). Apart from this, about one and a half lakhs barrels of crude oil are being obtained every day by Abu Safa oil well in Bahrain. About half of this quantity is delivered to Saudi Arabia.

Oil Minister of Bahrain, Muhammad Bin Khalifa announced in a press meet in Manama, its capital, about the discovery of shale oil reserves which is expected to be around 80 billion barrels along its west coast in the direction facing to Saudi Arabia extending to an area of 2000 sq.km. He also added that the actual quantity of oil is yet to be found out but with this, Bahrain will make its presence in the global economy as a wealthy nation in Crude oil production.

Currently, it would not be possible to produce oil immediately from the newly discovered well and it will definitely take 5 years to initiate the pumping of oil from the well after surveying the field. If it comes to production, it could deliver 200,000 barrels a day from the new well. Surveys are going on for discovering next two oil wells nearby. 

So far, Bahrain had been accounted for only 12.5 crores barrel Crude oil reserves and 9,200 crores cu.m of Natural gas reserves. With its newly discovered oil well, it adds about 8000 crores of crude oil to Bahrain with which it could be remarked as one of the major oil producing country in the upcoming years. Anyhow, Bahrain's neighbouring country, Saudi Arabia which is also the world's largest crude oil exporter holds about 2 lakhs 66 thousand crores barrel oil reserves with it.

According to the recent reports, Bahrain is planning to attract many foreign oil and natural gas companies to initiate the oil production from the new well thus promoting the Bahrain's economy which has been focussing on Finance and Tourism services for the past few years due to decreased price of crude oil in the global market and lack of oil reserves in Bahrain.