A decent update from Pouyanne (Total CEO) overnight. Mangetti appears to be "not huge", but the DST at Venus was "very good". Sounds like a lot more drilling planned to hunt down the "sweet spots", with 30% of this year's global exploration budget going to Namibia.
"TotalEnergies will drill a third delineation well on its 2 billion barrel Venus oil discovery in Namibia this year, as it tries to find the best spot to install a floating production, storage and offloading vessel to exploit the oil. Chief executive Patrick Pouyanne also confirmed a recent Upstream report that the company had success at its Mangetti exploration and appraisal well in the Orange basin — the world’s oil and gas exploration hot spot, with a number of major discoveries in recent years. The French supermajor currently has two rigs drilling in Block 2913B in the Orange basin, with the Tungsten Explorer still on location at Mangetti-1X, while Deepsea Mira is on the Venus-2A appraisal well. Mangetti-1X had two objectives — the Mangetti prospect itself and a deeper northern extension of Venus.
Speaking to analysts this morning in TotalEnergies’ fourth-quarter webcast, Pouyanne said: “I can tell you, we find some hydrocarbons (at Mangetti) and we find the hydrocarbon level of Venus, the extension to the north,” confirming Upstream’s report from earlier this week. Asked how big Mangetti is, he said: "It’s not huge,” before then elaborating on the results of the Venus-1A and Venus-2A appraisal wells and the implications for a planned FPSO-based project. “It’s not an homogenous field,” explained Pouyanne about Venus. “There are a lot of hydrocarbons, there are some sweet spots in terms of productivity and permeability, and there are some areas with less good characteristics. We had a very good drill stem test on one of the Venus wells. The location of the second one is imperfect, but demonstrates some heterogeneity. We need to be sure that we locate the FPSO at the right spot, not too far from the sweet spot.”
Pouyanne said developing Venus will “be a little like” Suriname, where the company is also working on an FPSO project where the focus has been on choosing the best installation site for the vessel, given there is more than one sweet spot. Venus “will be a combination of different sweet spots”, the location of which will impact on the design of the subsea architecture, including subsea wells and flowlines, he said. “If you want to minimise the cost of the subsea system you have to locate properly,” he stressed, adding that more appraisal drilling is vital to establish the “optimum location”. TotalEnergies will continue to drill on its Namibia acreage to better understand and define prospectivity, said Pouyanne, highlighting a well to be drilled this year called Kokerboom. Upstream understands that this well will test the western extent of the southern part of Venus.
As it did last year, Pouyanne said Namibia will also top the company’s 2024 exploration and appraisal spending, taking up about 30% of the supermajor’s $1 billion budget."
PCL Price at posting:
2.3¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
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