Bahrain announced on Wednesday its newly discovered shale oil reserve was estimated at more than 80 billion barrels, making the once-marginal oil producer potentially a major player in the market.

The size of recoverable oil is still under study, Oil Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa Al-Khalifa told a press conference in Manama. The new field dwarfs the Bahrain Field, the country's only other oil field, which contains several hundred million barrels.

"The new resource is forecast to contain highly significant quantities of tight (light crude) oil and deep gas, dwarfing Bahrain's current reserves," said the country's Higher Committee for Natural Resources, which is chaired by Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad.

The find in the Khaleej al-Bahrain, off the west coast, was "the largest discovery of oil in the country's history", it said in a statement.

Prince Salman tweeted that a press conference on Wednesday would "provide additional details on the discovery, including initial findings of size and extraction viability".

"Initial analysis demonstrates the find is at substantial levels, capable of supporting the long-term extraction of tight oil and deep gas," Bahrain's Minister of Oil, Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa Al-Khalifa said in a statement.

Bahrain currently has only one oilfield with several hundred million barrels of crude reserves. The field was the first to be discovered in the Gulf and the first to start production.

It currently pumps around 50,000 barrels per day (bpd), in addition to over one billion cubic feet (28 million cubic meters) of natural gas daily.