General Thoughts, page-4315

Where Is the Most Exciting Oil Exploration Region Right Now?

"In an exclusive interview, Andrew Latham, Wood Mackenzie’s Senior Vice President of Energy Research, told Rigzone that the world’s most exciting oil exploration play right now is the deepwater Orange Basin. “All the drilling so far has been in the Namibian sector, with giant discoveries from Shell (Graff, Jonker and others), TotalEnergies (Venus), and most recently Galp (Mopane),” Latham said. “Exact resources are still being appraised, but likely run to more than four billion barrels of oil,” he added.

“Mopane looks to be the best discovery so far, based on its excellent reservoir productivity,” Latham said, adding that Galp is currently selling half of its 80 percent equity in Mopane. Latham also noted that Namibia’s Orange Basin has significant associated gas, pointing out that that this is likely more than 10 trillion cubic feet across all the discoveries, “which will need an export solution (LNG)”.

“Namibian exploration continues apace and will include the first wells from Chevron, Rhino Resources, and Woodside later in 2024/2025,” Latham told Rigzone.

In an investor announcement posted on its website on April 30, Galp’s CEO, Filipe Silva, said, “in Namibia, together with our two local partners Namcor and Custos, we have significantly de-risked the Mopane complex after completing the first two wells and the DST in Mopane 1X”. “We have encountered significant light oil columns in high quality reservoir conditions, placing Mopane as a potential major commercial discovery,” Silva added.

“The flows achieved during the well test have reached the maximum allowed limits of 14,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, potentially positioning Mopane as an important commercial discovery,” Galp said in the statement. “In the Mopane complex alone, and before drilling additional exploration and appraisal wells, hydrocarbon in-place estimates are 10 billion barrels of oil equivalent, or higher,” it added. In its report, BofA Global Research said, “our $11.7bn valuation of Galp’s stake in Mopane makes up about half of our Galp sum of the parts valuation”.