Anadarko, the US oil group and its partners Woodside of Australia, Repsol of Spain and Tullow Oil of the UK, confirmed on Wednesday that they had found a new oil coast from Sierra Leone to Ghana in which they expect to discover several more huge oil fields over the coming five years.

The announcement was made on the back of positive drilling results of the Venus well off the coast of Sierra Leone, 1,100km from Ghana’s Jubilee field, Africa’s largest deep water field.