Very good read. It just keeps giving billions and billions of...

Very good read. It just keeps giving billions and billions of barrels...

"Independent data confirms vast scale of reserves in Africa's latest frontier play.

TotalEnergies chief executive Patrick Pouyanne was out of the blocks early, trying to put a lid on expectations. But the supermajor’s exploration team clearly convinced him Venus deserved his attention and ended up persuading Pouyanne to plough the bulk of TotalEnergies’ 2023 exploration expenditure into appraising it this year. Judging by the drilling chat, this money has been well spent, with the first appraisal probe — an impressive 13 kilometres from the discovery well — said to be a major success.

Shell has gone quietly about its business, also tamping down expectations around Graff and three subsequent finds, La Rona, Jonker and Lesedi. Both supermajors have been reluctant to discuss resource size, so last week’s revelation by Namcor, Namibia’s state oil company, that 11 billion barrels of oil in place have been discovered to date would seem to justify all the early excitement.

Citing Wood Mackenzie, Namcor said the juiciest discoveries are Venus with 5.1 billion barrels and Jonker with 2.5 billion barrels, which suggests these Lower and Middle Cretaceous plays are more attractive than Upper Cretaceous finds such as Graff. Although WoodMac’s numbers are in-place estimates, conservative recovery rates would suggest each discovery could produce at least 1 billion barrels.

As Namibia’s Petroleum Commissioner Maggy Shino put it so eloquently last week: “We have only begun to scratch the surface of the Orange basin.” Precisely."