OMV AG (OMV), central Europe’s biggest oil company, said it discovered what may be its biggest gas find in a Black Sea well it is exploring together with a unit of Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM)

“The exploration well encountered 70.7 meters of net gas pay, resulting in a preliminary estimate for the accumulation ranging from 1.5 to 3 trillion cubic feet (42 to 84 billion cubic meters),” OMV said in a statement today.

 “This may be the biggest find in OMV’s history,” Chief Executive Officer Gerhard Roiss told reporters in Vienna today.

The two companies will utilize 3D seismic acquisition during 2012, Jaap Huijskes, who heads exploration and production at OMV, said.

While “it is too early in the data evaluation and exploration process to determine whether the Neptun block will ultimately prove to be commercially developable or not,” the companies would need to spend “multiple billions of dollars to develop” Domino-1, he said, adding that potential first production would be “toward the end of the decade at the earliest.”

Appraisal wells and 3D seismic “will take some time, the Black Sea is not off the coast of Aberdeen, it takes some time to get rigs into the Black Sea and it takes time to get seismic vessels into the Black Sea,” Huijskes said, declining to specify a time frame.