India's Reliance Industries has reported an oil discovery in a new block in the Krishna Godavari (KG) basin, the director-general of Hydrocarbons said.

'They (Reliance Industries) have informed us today about the oil find and production testing is going on. It will take some time to ascertain the commerciality of the discovery,' V K Sibal said.

The Hindu Business Line newspaper said Reliance had found oil in its D4 block, also known as KG-DWN-98/1, in the KG basin off India's east coast, quoting unidentified sources.

Another official at the regulator's office, who did not want to identified, said Reliance had said the oil find had an initial flow rate of 596 barrel per day (bpd).

In July, Reliance found oil and gas in a block in the nearby Cauvery basin and said it had a flow rate of 1,000 bpd of oil and 30 million cubic feet of gas.

Reliance, which discovered India's largest gas field in the KG basin in 2002, is spending about $5.2 billion to develop and $3.5 billion to maintain production from its deep-sea gas fields.Reuters