LONDON (Bloomberg) -- Statoil ASA, Norway’s biggest oil company, reported an oil discovery at the Rosebank well, 160 kilometers (100 miles) northwest of the UK’s Shetland Islands.

The oil was discovered in about 1,000 meters (3,281 feet) of water, the company said in a statement on its Web site. The crude, flowing at a rate of 6,000 barrels a day, is “very light,” with a gravity of 38 degrees on the American Petroleum Institute scale, Statoil said. The Stavanger, Norway-based company owns 30 percent of the discovery and has not yet deemed it a commercial find, it said. “Although it remains too early to judge the scale of this success, this is clearly a positive data-point for Statoil,” James Neale, an analyst with Citigroup Global Markets Inc., wrote in a note to clients. As national oil companies in the Middle East and Russia step up efforts to protect potential exploration acreage, publicly traded companies including Statoil, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, and Chevron Corp. have begun looking for more hydrocarbons in the North Atlantic Margin, which stretches from the waters off northern Norway to western Ireland. Chevron owns 40 percent of Rosebank and operates the prospect. Austria’s OMV AG and Denmark’s Dong Energy A/S own 20 percent and 10 percent, respectively