Up to 233 billion barrels of oil has been discovered in the Australian outback that could be worth trillions of dollars, in a find that could turn the region into a new Saudi Arabia.

The discovery in central Australia was reported by Linc Energy.

The report estimated the company's 16 million acres of land in the Arckaringa Basin in South Australia contain between 133 billion and 233 billion barrels of shale oil trapped in the region's rocks.

Peter Bond, Linc Energy's chief executive, said the find could transform the world's oil industry but noted that it would cost about £200 million to enable production in the area. Shale oil is more costly to extract than conventional crude oil and involves the controversial process of fracking, in which water and chemicals are used to break up the rocks.

"It is massive, it is just huge If the Arckaringa plays out the way we hope it will, and the way our independent reports have shown, it's one of the key prospective territories in the world at the moment. If you stress test it right down and you only took the very sweetest spots in the absolute known areas and you do nothing else, it is about 3.5 billion [barrels] and that's sort of worse-case scenario."