Namibia, the next frontier of oil expansion

After numerous offshore oil discoveries in recent months, Namibia hopes large oil discoveries can help it double its economy over the next two decades, the head of the National Petroleum Corporation of Namibia (NAMCOR) told Bloomberg on Tuesday . A possible breath of fresh air for an increasingly tense energy market.

Since the beginning of the year, the oil majors Shell and TotalEnergies have announced discoveries off the African country. "After more than 30 years of exploration and we finally hit the mark," Jennifer Comalie, president of NAMCOR, said in an interview with Bloomberg.

“ At best, these two discoveries could bring $ 5.6 billion to a very small economy,” Comalie said. in 2020 Nabibia's GDP was just over 10 billion dollars, so oil could lead to an increase of over 50%! Namibia has a population of only 2.6 million, which is $ 2,000 of annual GDP per inhabitant.

Namibia could start production around 2030 or a little earlier if evaluations of recent discoveries confirm initial estimates and, of course, if the majors commit to developing these discoveries by looking to become zero-energy companies by 2050.

In April, Shell said it was "very encouraged" by the first results of the Graff-1 deep-water exploration well, completed earlier this year.

"In the coming months we will have to carry out further evaluation of the well's results and further exploration activities to determine the size and recoverable potential of the hydrocarbons identified," said Dennis Zekveld, Shell Country Chair in Namibia.

In April, Shell made a second discovery in the Orange Basin.

In the same basin, off southern Namibia, TotalEnergies made a major discovery of light oil with associated gas in the Venus perspective, the French supermajor said in February of this year. TotalEnergies is also required to proceed with valuation drilling operations in the area to assess the discovery's commercial prospects.

"This discovery off the coast of Namibia and very promising initial results demonstrate the potential of this field in the Orange Basin, where TotalEnergies holds an important position in both Namibia and South Africa," said Kevin McLachlan, senior vice president of exploration. by TotalEnergies.

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The article Namibia, the next frontier of oil expansion comes from ScenariEconomici.it .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/namibia-prossima-frontiera-dellespansione-petrolifera/ on Wed, 22 Jun 2022 09:00:31 +0000.