Ann: Investor Webinar, page-13

Yep, news flow heating up...our immediate southern neighbour has started chasing the 10 billion barrels.

Galp starts drilling probe on huge prospect in Namibia's prolific Orange basin

"Galp Energia has spudded an exploration well in Namibia’s prolific Orange basin, targeting a huge structure that could hold as much as 10 billion barrels of oil in place. This closely-watched probe is being drilled in Petroleum Exploration Licence 83, immediately north of acreage where Shell has made four big discoveries to date, and just west of BW Energy’s 1.3 trillion cubic foot Kudu gas project.

Chief executive Filipe Silva told analysts on 30 October: “We have always said that we want to capture the exploration upside and take all the exploration risk cost downside. So yes, we have been having discussions with several parties, but this is not the time to engage. We need to understand the scale of what we have at hand.”

Located in Block 2813A, the well is 14 kilometres north of the boundary with Shell’s acreage and some 30 kilometres from the supermajor’s unsuccessful, albeit high-risk, Cullinan-1 probe which was targeting a carbonate structure. Victoria Sibeya, Namcor’s head of upstream exploration, told Upstream last month that Galp is not targeting carbonates but is going after “Upper Cretaceous plays… that have already been proven in (Shell’s) Graff-1X discovery”.

Adriano Bastos, Galp’s head of upstream special projects, explained to analysts in the company’s third quarter webcast last month that Cullinan was a carbonate target, “which is not the reservoir that is Mopane’s objective (which is) a sandstone”.