Underneath the groves that make southern Italy the world’s second-largest olive oil producer, geologists have found a more lucrative liquid: Europe’s biggest onshore crude oil fields.

Basilicata, a mountainous, sparsely populated province that sits in the arch of Italy’s boot, holds more than 1 billion barrels, offering the country a weapon to fight a two-year recession. Rome-based Eni SpA (ENI) and France’s Total SA (FP) plan to double production raising Italy’s output to almost 200,000 barrels a day, making the country Europe’s third-largest oil producer behind the U.K. and Norway.

Since the field started production in the 1990s, its development has been held back by environmental campaigns and bureaucratic delays. Those impediments are falling away, analyst Carlo Stagnaro said, because the priority for Italy’s government is kickstarting an economy that’s shrunk for six straight quarters and where more than 35 percent of young people are unemployed.