2023 - going to be a big year, page-65

Tend to agree - I don't see why the Namibian Minister of Energy would both extend for an extra year and waive the obligatory 50% relinquishment of the licence area if it were mostly likely to 'slip by'. Rather, I see the 3D seismic being ann imminently. Interest in the area will see this through imo...

NAMIBIA’S NEXT GREAT HOPES, BEYOND VENUS AND GRAFF

"Namibia has leapt to the forefront of exploration thinking with the Venus and Graff discoveries last year, but there are opportunities beyond TotalEnergies and Shell."

"The Venus and Graff discoveries are a “big positive” for Namibia, founder and managing director of SNC Incorporated Shakwa Nyambe said. “It is going to spark a lot interest in the upstream and I expert M&A as bigger companies come in to acquire assets from junior oil companies,” the lawyer said."

"The first ever deep-water wildcat drilled in Namibia’s offshore waters produced the largest oil discovery of 2022, with Venus establishing itself as a major find comparable to ExxonMobil’s 2015 Liza discovery, the first significant oil find offshore Guyana.

Experts also reckon that TotalEnergies’ Venus discovery could be the world’s largest deep-water field, with the potential to far surpass Buzios offshore Brazil where recoverable reserves stand at 11.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent.

Upstream broke the news about the Venus discovery on 23 February, with UK-based consultancy Wood Mackenzie later estimating its recoverable oil reserves to be at least 3 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe), with unknown volumes of gas.

Followed through with Shell’s Graff discovery in an exploration well drilled simultaneously to Venus, the next step will see other producers joining the hype and spudding their wells in other license blocks."

"A French firm specialising in African upstream operations Maurel& Prom might be opening up another frontier in Namibia, spudding the Aurora wildcat this year.

Despite the differences, geologically Aurora should be similar to Venus, considering it is located in the license block just above TotalEnergies’ 2913B block (and immediately to the south of PEL 87), so in case the exploration well does hit commercial volumes of oil, it is going to be big, according to experts."