While drilling deep for water last week in his field near Ouled Rahmoune, in northeastern Algeria, a farmer was surprised to see a liquid pouring from the pipes of a very different consistency, smell, color — and worth! Oil.

What makes the discovery all the more unusual is that Algeria's most important known deposits of black gold are located in the south of the country, as ObservAlgérie writes.

It didn't take long for images of the farmer's lucky find to gush forth on social media: A video, picked up by the Arab-language news site Echorouk Online, sees the flabbergasted farmer filming the black pond of petrol that poured over his parcel.

Photo: ObservAlgérie

It's unclear the potential value of the discovery, while several of the people commenting questioned whether the farmer may have punctured a buried pipeline, rather than stumble upon an underground oil deposit. To answer those questions and more, local authorities have dispatched specialists to um... dig a little deeper.