Just thinking out loud here for the most part, following an...

Just thinking out loud here for the most part, following an article released on Upstream in recent days:

Namibia tells TotalEnergies and Shell to work with Kudu gas project operator to tap 10 Tcf of gas

When reading it, one very much gets the feel that the Namibian govt is wishing to develop things asap. They're also going hard, telling the majors what they want...

Namibia’s government is “forcing” TotalEnergies and Shell to work closely with BW Energy, operator of the Kudu gas project, on a joint development plan for the huge volumes of natural gas that the trio have found in the Orange basin. Between them, the two supermajors have found up to 8.7 trillion cubic feet of gas in the prolific deep-water part of the basin over the past 20 months — in addition to billions of barrels of oil — augmenting 1.3 Tcf of shallow-water gas reserves that BW Energy has been struggling to commercialise at Kudu. “We’re not encouraging them, we’re forcing them to have conversations with each other,” said Maggy Shino, Petroleum Commissioner at Namibia’s Ministry of Mines & Energy.

It then makes we wonder what the recent conversation at Cape Town between NAMCOR, PCL and WDS would have sounded like. If WDS were saying, 'Well, we've got 180 days from the final data-set to make a decision, then we'll need to arrange a rig, so we're probably looking at well into 2025", I can only wonder whether Maggy Shino's response would be along the lines of, 'If you're going to take that long to mull over things and arrange a drill, don't bother submitting your application for an additional exploration period.'