General Thoughts, page-4089

BW Energy eyes fast-track Namibia exploration campaign in block near Galp's huge Mopane discovery

"BW Energy is in talks with other Orange basin players in Namibia about securing access to a drilling rig to accelerate exploration activities close to its Kudu gas discovery. The Oslo-listed junior operates Production Licence (PL) 3 which holds the 1.3 trillion cubic foot Kudu field that the company was preparing to develop before TotalEnergies and Shell discovered huge volumes of oil in the basin, kicking of a drilling frenzy that has turned up big volumes of oil and gas. As a result, BW decided to shoot fresh 3D seismic last year over PL 3 to see if it could identify Cretaceous discoveries similar to those discovered by its near neighbours. It was close to completing analysis of these seismic data when, last month, Galp Energia announced it had discovered 10 billion barrels of oil equivalent in-place resources with its Mopane-1X and -2X wells in a block immediately to the west.

BW chief executive Carl Arnet late last week told analysts that, in light of the Mopane find, the company has managed to secure access to additional seismic data just outside PL 3. “We have decided to bring that into our data set and extend our analysis of our (licence). We find this (new data) extremely interesting, and it gives us a lot of good data points,” he said in the company's first-quarter conference call. Interpretation of the initial data has enhanced BW's depositional model and de-risked potential targets, with additional prospects identified. Chief operating officer Lin Garner Espey explained to analysts on 24 May that two play types have been pinpointed so far: The Barremian-age Kudu gas play and the Santonian-Campanian play “which is more analogous to what the folks in the blocks adjacent to use have made discoveries on". He said that Mopane is a Santonian-Campanian prospect.

BW has also secured long-lead items for an exploration campaign in 2025, with Arnet suggesting that the company could be drilling in the Orange basin in the coming 12 months or so. “Due to increased drilling activity, we see much-improved availability of rigs and have had very fruitful dialogue with other operators in the Orange basin.” Expanding, Arnet said: “It looks like we may be able to get access to drilling capacity much earlier than we had previously anticipated.“ "We are absolutely going to try to benefit from that. We will go as early as we can in 2025.” Rhino Resources is bringing a drillship into the Orange basin for a two-well programme in the fourth quarter of 2024, while Chevron could start a drilling programme around the same time. It is unclear when TotalEnergies, Shell and Galp could bring rigs back into the Orange basin."