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(Image: GETTY/REUTERS)

The news could also crush our last hope of stopping the missile-mad nation, which would no longer fear other countries cutting its energy supply.

It comes just days after tubby tyrant Kim Jong-un conducted his first successful atomic bomb test and pledged his weapons could destroy the whole of America at once.

While plummeting oil prices are already causing chaos for economies around the world, with energy exporters like Russia haemorrhaging cash due to the global oversupply.

(Image: GETTY)

And if North Korea uses the money to fund nuking its neighbours it could spark a world war, one expert on Asian security told Daily Star Online.

Dr Chris Ogden, who lectures on International Relations at the University of St Andrews, described the domino effect which would drag the West into the fight.

He said: “If a missile were to hit Japan, then Japan is in a treaty with the United States where it is bound to attack back – and it’s the same with South Korea."

* * WORLD'S WEIRDEST HOLIDAY: WHAT TOURISTS LOVE IN NORTH KOREA * *

The money could be put to further use securing top tech for the communist country's army – which is already the fourth largest in the world.

“North Korea generally wants to carve it’s own path in the international system, ignoring all criticism and behaving how it wants," said Dr Ogden.

“But technologically, the North Korean army is from the 1960s and 70s.

“So they might want to modernise against forces from South Korea which are much more modern."

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A test well dug in North Korea's West Sea basin spat out black gold at the rate of 450 barrels a day - compared with an average output of 20 in the USA, figures show.

America has 600,000 active oil wells, so with just one 1% of that the sinister socialist state could knock out 2.7million barrels a year.

Which even by today's rock-bottom prices would net the secretive nation an estimated $31billion (£21billion) a year.

Petroleum science magazine GeoExPro, which uncovered the data revealing North Korea's hidden oil, said the state had "excellent potential".

And there would be no trouble offloading the newly-found petroleum, according to Dr Ogden.

He said: “I think anybody would buy it. China would buy it definitely and perhaps Russia. China worries a lot about its energy security.”

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While there is a chance North Korea could spend its wealth feeding its starving population – an perhaps even liberalise – the odds are small.

Dr Ogden said: “Another country that came on to money was Burma, where they discovered gas reserves. That helped lead to political reform.

"But North Korea is a very specific case. They still think they are fighting the Korean War – and they are nuclear armed."

"These are quite exceptional circumstances, no other state that is nuclear armed is so threatening," he said.

For now the world will have to wait and see if North Korea can afford the tech it needs to gets its oil boom going.

After that the challenge will be keeping other countries from selling the totalitarian regime the advanced weaponry it craves.