Genie says drilling of two wells has confirmed the "existence of significant quantities of oil and gas", but it does not yet know of the hydrocarbons can be recovered or are economic.

It says the pay zone is up to 350m thick.

Chairman Howard Jonas said the company was optimistic given the results to date.

"In term of quantity, our log results indicate that this could be a significant find if analogous conditions are present over a significant portion of the license area. We are now working diligently to determine the production costs and total quantity of the resource."

Genie, which Jonas spun out of this telecommunications company IDT Corporation in 2011, also has oil shale research and development in Colorado, Israel and Mongolia.

The firm counts former Halliburton boss and US vice president Dick Cheney, News Ltd kingpin Rupert Murdoch and ex-CIA boss James Woolsey on its advisory board.

Genie has completed drilled two wells within its almost 400sq.km licence in northern Israel to date, and believes the newly area may contain significant quantities of conventional oil and gas in relatively tight formations.

It has spudded the third well of a proposed 10 well program to unlock the resource.

Genie's Afek Oil and Gas subsidiary has told Israeli media that the field could 10 times larger than the average oil field worldwide. Some media reported that the field could hold billions of barrels, but did not source the claim.

"We are talking about a strata which is 350m thick and what is important is the thickness and the porosity," Yuval Bartov, Afek's oil and gas chief geologist told Israel's Channel 2 News.

"On average in the world strata are 20-30m thick, so this is ten times as large as that, so we are talking about significant quantities. The important thing is to know the oil is in the rock and that's what we now know."

Genie returned to the Golan Heights several years ago, after examining a 1980s water well that encountered oil in the Gharab/Mishash chalk between 660-900m.

It examined the core and was able to extract light oil from the cuttings 31 years later.

It says the reservoir could extend over 70% of its licence area, with oil in place potential of 150 million barrels/sq.km.

Successfully bringing the field into production could meet the nation's domestic energy demands. Israel consumes 270,000 barrels of oil per day.

Some 530 wells have been drilled in Israel over the decades, but with little success, and Israel had long been considered to be not that prospective.

The newly found reserve is not without controversy.

Numerous environmental groups and residents of the Golan Heights are bitterly opposed to the drilling, expressing fears that it could damage the region's landscape, with fraccing seen as a risk to the Sea of Galilee.

The international community considers the Golan Heights occupied territory, further complicating the prospects for oil production.