Several announcements of oil discoveries have been made in recent months in Namibia. Even if doubts still remain about the country’s hydrocarbon potential, the announcements state of the largest deposits discovered in the world in recent years.
On February 24, TotalEnergies announced a “significant discovery of light oil and associated gas” in its concession in the Orange Basin, offshore Namibia. Earlier on January 25, 2022, the Anglo-Dutch oil and gas company Shell also reported a major oil and gas discovery in the same oil field. According to the Dutch company, large quantities of oil were intercepted in a layer at least 60 meters deep. According to the first assessments, the potential of this new deposit is between 250 and 300 million barrels on this well.
Namibia, a supplier of black gold in Africa?
The latest events confirm the potential of this new energy hot spot. Namibia is thus taking its place among the African producing countries, following the example of Nigeria, Libya, Angola, South Africa etc.
First, we have the exploitation of the Kavango basin, in the north of Namibia, between Angola and Botswana. Ongoing exploratory drilling activities are promising, with an estimated 120 billion barrels of oil. If the results are as conclusive, it would be one of the most important deposits discovered in the world in recent years. Secondly, we have this major oil discovery made offshore by Shell. Shell’s Graff-1 well was drilled on the high seas, in water depths of over 5,000 meters. The multinational said the exploration well off the coast of the southern African country had yielded “encouraging” results
Thirdly, another multinational, TotalEnergies, is currently drilling another well, Venus, in a nearby block. To this end, TotalEnergies Exploration Manager Kevin McLachlan said. “This discovery offshore Namibia and the very promising first results prove the potential of the Orange Basin, where TotalEnergies has an important position in both Namibia and South Africa.
Moreover, these discoveries come at a time when countries and oil companies want to move away from hydrocarbons and towards renewable and low-carbon energies. What a paradox!
An upper-middle-income country, Namibia is heavily dependent on mining, a sector that provided more than 50 percent of its foreign exchange earnings between 2015 and 2019, according to the World Bank.
For the moment, Namibia is not yet an oil producing country, but with these various discoveries, the country could become the next Eldorado of black gold in Africa in the years to come.
