Andrew Purcell, a former junior Macquarie investment banker, said that the energy company he chairs began pumping oil from a well in Cuba this week, a step towards obtaining the 267 million barrels his geologists estimate could be extracted from the field.

At 80 per cent of current prices – a discount applied because of the Cuba government’s control of oil prices in the Caribbean communist nation – the little-known, Sydney-based Melbana Energy’s oil discovery on Cuba’s northern coastline is worth about $30 billion.