Shell has discovered at least 500 million barrels of recoverable oil in Namibia’s Orange Basin, the country’s petroleum commissioner Maggy Shino has said.
The official was talking to Energy Capital & Power ahead of the Namibia International Energy Conference, in Windhoek on April 23-25.
Shino said Shell Namibia Upstream had found from 200 million barrels at Graff-1 and another 300mn barrels at Jonker-1X. Namcor has previously circulated higher figures, although without specifying what volumes may be recoverable.
TotalEnergies’ Venus discovery, meanwhile, she estimated held up to 2 billion barrels of recoverable oil.
“We have commenced appraisal work on the Graff-1 and Venus-1 discoveries and the initial results have been very encouraging,” she told ECP. “We are making ongoing evaluations to determine the exact size of these fields and continuously improve our estimates to determine commerciality.”
Shell has drilled four discoveries on PEL 39, at Graff, Jonker, La Rona and Lesedi. Total drilled its Venus discovery on PEL 56.
“It has been a journey to get here – we drilled close to 37 dry wells prior to these discoveries,” said Shino.
The plan is to accelerate development of the oil finds in Namibia, she continued. She did not set out a timeline for when the government expected production to begin.
There are four rigs operating offshore Namibia currently, the Deepsea Mira, Tungsten Explorer, Deepsea Bollsta and the Hercules semi-submersible. Shino said work was going on to determine flow rates and “explore for more upside potential”.
The commissioner predicted that it would take six months to gather the data.
Shell is demobilising its drilling rig and has recently set out plans to acquire more seismic on its Namibia licence.
Beyond the Orange Basin
She went on to note that Namibia’s oil and gas industry was only beginning. There is deepwater potential in the country’s three other offshore basins. Meanwhile, onshore the Owambo and Nama basins are under explored and the Kavango may “hold up to 30 billion barrels of oil”, in a statement likely to encourage Reconnaissance Energy Africa.
“Our geological data confirm that there are still many prospects that are mapped with untapped reservoirs both onshore and offshore, and for that we will continue promoting the country’s petroleum potential.”