TotalEnergies is set to launch its huge Venus development offshore Namibia later this year, according to a top executive at the supermajor, who cites the discovery’s “impressive” reservoir characteristics.
The French giant two years ago discovered Venus in the Orange basin and has moved fast to appraise this major ultra-deepwater field in an effort to fast-track its development via at least one floating production, storage and offloading vessel.
Kevin McLachlan, TotalEnergies’ head of exploration, at last week’s BEOS event — organised by AAPG and GESGB — revealed intriguing details about Venus to a rapt audience, focusing on the “impressive” sub-surface findings to date from the discovery well and two completed drill stem tests, with another two DSTs under way.
“We’re really pleased with what we have here. We’re still integrating results to confirm a development, but we think we will be there with the discoveries (Venus and Mangetti) we’ve made. We expect to see a first project confirmed later this year.”
In what was something of an understatement for an auditorium full of geologists, geophysicists and sedimentologists, McLachlan said: “I know all of you are keen to hear more about Venus,” before going on to highlight the scale of just one reservoir system uncovered by both TotalEnergies in Block 2913B and Shell in neighbouring Block 2913A.
“It’s very impressive. We’re talking about a 150-kilometre system,” he said, stressing that the Albian reservoir is comprised of turbidites sitting directly on the source rock, so perfectly placed for being charged with hydrocarbons.
“We’ve interpreted a series of constrained flow systems that are very far-reaching and then spread out into very large, widespread channel lobes.”
McLachlan said what is particularly “impressive” about Venus is the reservoir connectivity.
“The vertical connectivity is very, very good. It’s perfectly connected,” he explained, highlighting there is also “a good pressure connection between the appraisal well and the discovery well”.
TotalEnergies’ head of exploration said that the gas-oil-ratio is “high” and porosities are “good” and although permeabilities are “low”, the oil’s viscosity is “very good” which helps counteract this constraint.
It is understood that while low permeability would be an issue with many oil reservoirs, the upside for Venus is that its crude has “super-low viscosity”.
McLachlan said Venus’ oil in place reserves are “impressive” while stressing that it is “of course, about the recoverable resource”, which is what the supermajor is working on now.
He did not reveal the size of Venus, although Namibia’s authorities have previously stated the discovery holds 5 billion barrels of oil in place, of which 2 billion barrels are recoverable.
As for Mangetti, Upstream was told recently that it could house 1.5 billion barrels of in-place reserves, with potential recoverable reserves of perhaps 600 million barrels.
Upstream