"Shell has such “belief” in the scale of its oil and gas discoveries in Namibia’s Orange basin that it will funnel a quarter of its deepwater exploration budget for 2023 and 2024 into the country, according to chief executive Wael Sawan. Shell has made four significant discoveries in Namibia to date — Graff, La Rona, Lesedi and Jonker. The supermajor’s only failure in the basin has been the Cullinan-1 probe which was targeting a very different geology — a carbonate structure in the north of its acreage — from its successful wells in the south.
Sawan told analysts yesterday: “To give you a sense of our belief in Namibia roughly a quarter of our deepwater exploration spend in 2023 and 2024 will be directed to Namibia. “It is a theatre that we fundamentally believe in and we are looking to understand what is the optimal pathway for us to be able to go forward.”
Commenting on the wells drilled to date, Shell’s chief executive was very bullish. “We continue to like what we see. What’s particularly pleasing is that all of those wells drilled have been top quartile across every benchmark that we find in the wells space. There’s a lot of encouraging data that we have identified … around volumes in place and the like [but] critically, it’s now about making sure we understand the producibility of a lot of the various horizons that are there in that play.”
Northern Offshore’s semi-submersible rig Deepsea Bollsta is drilling a critical appraisal well on Jonker — which could be the first field to be tapped by Shell — with the Jonker-1A appraisal well having spudded in late August. Jonker-1A is being drilled more than 22 kilometres northwest of Jonker-1 probe, indicating the potential size of the discovery. Jonker is estimated to hold about 2.5 billion barrels of oil in-place, according to Namcor, Namibia’s state oil company."
PCL Price at posting:
1.5¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
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