"TotalEnergies most recent discovery offshore Namibia has the potential to be far bigger than seemingly implied by the company’s top executive last week. Speaking to analysts during the supermajor’s fourth-quarter results webcast, chief executive Patrick Pouyanne said, when asked about the size of the Mangetti discovery, that it was “not huge”.
Upstream, however, has been told by two market sources with knowledge of the Mangetti-1X exploration well in the Orange basin, that Pouyanne’s comments may have been made in reference to the French supermajor’s very big Venus oil discovery. Venus, according to Namibian officials, contains 5 billion barrels of oil in place, of which some 2 billion barrels is expected to be recoverable. In comparison, Mangetti could well be considered “not huge”, though Upstream has been advised that the Mangetti structure — it is a deepwater fan — holds an estimated 1.5 billion barrels of in-place resources. If, like Venus, some 40% of Mangetti’s reserves are deemed recoverable, then the field could hold 600 million barrels of exploitable crude. Even with a 20% initial recovery factor, the deepwater discovery could contain 300 million barrels of recoverable volumes.
Upstream was told the Mangetti-1X probe was not drilled in the best location, partly because TotalEnergies had given more priority for the well to be drilled deeper to test the northern extension of Venus. The Venus-focused part of the operation was successful, with the deeper part of the probe believed to have registered good reservoir permeability. Mangetti-1X hit two reservoirs, one of which was better than the other, it is understood, with results said to be “good”. The next goal for TotalEnergies is to drill a Mangetti appraisal well at the most optimal location, said the two sources, with the results from this probe set crucial to determine the scale of the structure's resources."
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