Dubai’s newly discovered offshore oil field will enter production within a year and is expected to increase crude production by a 'noticeable percentage' once commercial operations starts. Estimates of the new oil field’s reserves or production capacity will be announced once studies are completed, the emirate’s media office said in an e-mailed statement. The field, named 'Al Jalila' after the Dubai ruler’s daughter with Princess Haya bint Al Hussein of Jordan, is Dubai’s fifth to be discovered since the mid-1960s, the statement said.

Although the location of the field has not been disclosed, Dubai said on Thursday the field was east of the producing Rashid oil field, but did not say how far. Rashid is one of Dubai's four main oil fields, so it may be able to use Rashid's infrastructure for the new production.

Oil reserves at Dubai’s four other oil fields are estimated at 4 billion barrels and natural gas deposits are estimated at about 117 billion cubic meters, the statement said. The United Arab Emirates holds about 8 percent of the world’s oil reserves, with most of the federation’s deposits held in the emirate of Abu Dhabi. The U.A.E. has 97.8 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, according to BP Plc’s Statistical Review of World Energy. Dubai may exhaust its oil reserves in about 20 years and already relies on imports of natural gas from Qatar for its power plants and industry.

Source: Newswires