French oil giant Total said it had found an important gasfield in the Caspian Sea off the coast of Azerbaijan, a discovery that the country's president called a major event.

The field could produce billions of cubic feet of natural gas, said Total, which holds 40 per cent of the joint venture along with Azerbaijan's national oil company Socart with a 40 per cent stake and GDF Suez with 20 per cent.

The Absheron X-2 block is thought to have large pockets of gas spread over a 270 sq km field, and the firm hopes to find several trillion cubic feet of gas and associated condensates.

'This discovery could be very significant in terms of resources,' said Total's senior vice-president for exploration Marc Blaizot.

Blaizot said the techniques it has developed in its Caspian work would help it find more gas in similar basins off Britain, Brunei, Malaysia and Egypt, where new permits have been recently awarded to Total.

The Caspian well is near Total's existing Shah Deniz gasfield.-Reuters