“There’s strong potential for more reservoirs to be discovered and developed,” said Ian McLelland, head of oil and gas at Edison Investment Research in London. “In time, it’s not unreasonable to think that there will be significantly larger discoveries than Sea Lion.”

The Falkland government is still in the early stages of planning and hasn’t made any decisions about how to spend the money, Luxton said. He said the first infrastructure projects would probably be a new deepwater port and upgrading the main road between the airport and the capital.

Argentina’s invasion sparked a 74-day conflict in which 255 British and 649 Argentine military personnel died, along with three islanders. The U.K. now maintains 1,200 military personnel in the British Falklands garrison.

Defense Spending

“As far as many Falkland Islanders are concerned, using some of the money for defense would be something popular,” Luxton said. “In Norway, they didn’t encourage domestic investments to prevent inflation in the country. We haven’t got into detail yet, but these are the kinds of things we’re thinking about.”

Norway started its sovereign wealth fund in 1990. It’s now the largest in the world, with about 4 trillion kroner ($715 billion) in assets after returning 13.4 percent in 2012.

Shetland, the group of U.K. islands north of Scotland’s mainland that Falkland officials also visited last year, set up the Shetland Charitable Trust in 1976 to manage the influx of money from the discovery of North Sea oil.

The Falkland Islands also saw revenue rise quickly in the 1980s as commercial fisheries were built. The government on its website boasts that the economy, based on fishing, agriculture and tourism, is self-sufficient except for defense.

The islands have already made an initial deposit into a new Oil Development Reserve of 8.3 million pounds, according to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute, a Las Vegas-based consultant on public investors. The Falkland Islands have the smallest population of any of the funds listed on the organization’s website.

The Falkland authorities have a good track record, said Clausen, who’s lived there since she was three. Islanders are mostly confident that the oil money won’t be squandered.