Rystad Energy analyst Pranav Joshi has said that Namibia could find itself among the top eight largest oil producers in the world by 2035 following successes experienced in the Mangetti and Mopani exploration wells.
Just recently Global oil major Shell confirmed the presence of oil deposits at the Enigma-1X well offshore Namibia. This was Shell’s fifth oil discovery.
Insights by Joshi reveal that significant upside is expected from Mopani well while Enigma will add to the forecast.
Rystad Energy predicts that Saudi Arabia, Brazil and United Arab Emirates (UAE) will top ranking at the top three oil producing nations in the world in 2035.
Recently Joshi was also quoted saying based on the existing discoveries, Namibia is looking at 700,000 barrels per day (bpd) of peak production capacity by the next decade.
While this figure is smaller than others such as Angola’s output, Namibia’s production capacity could increase with more successful exploration endeavours.
Production in Namibia could begin in 2030, and the country could be Africa’s fourth-largest producer of oil, with French company TotalEnergies making discoveries estimated at 2.6 billion barrels in recent years.
OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais in his pre-recorded address on last week to the Namibia International Energy Conference said although Namibia expects billions of barrels from the Orange Basin, the country has just scratched the surface of its hydrocarbon basins.
Similarly at the same conference, Dr. Marcio Mello, President of the Brazil Petroleum Studies expressed that Namibia’s offshore deposits could be in the range of hundreds of billions of barrels, Geological data underscores the potential for over 100 billion barrels of unrisked oil reserves, with hundreds of prospects yet to be drilled.
According to Dr. Mello, Namibia is a unique, supergiant oil play, with opportunities to make billion-barrel finds evident in various basins. “Namibia could be 100 billion barrels [unrisked resources], easily. There are prospects that have not been drilled yet. How about the Walvis and Luderitz basins? The petroleum systems have not been proven yet. We have already mapped [these areas], and the results showed several giant discoveries. Both systems are oil-prone and are in peak to post-peak oil generation in the entire study area,” he stated.
The country has already witnessed nine discoveries in the Orange Basin. Providing estimates, Fernando Sylvester, Independence Consultant, Nautilus Mining and Energy, said, “Galp’s Mopane Well could contain 10 billion barrels; Venus by TotalEnergies could contain between 8-10 billion barrels; and Graff…is easily between 23-23 billion barrels.”
Raydel Toirac Proenza, co-Founder and Geologist, Pioneer Energy, added that “the benefits are unimaginable.”
Last Monday, shares of Portugal’s Galp Energia popped more than 20% after the company announced that the first phase of its exploration in the Mopane field in offshore Namibia could contain at least 10B barrels of oil. The Mopane field is located in the Orange Basin, where Shell Plc and TotalEnergies have made several oil and gas discoveries. Galp produced an average of just over 122,000 barrels of oil-equivalent per day in 2023.
Galp’s discovery is comparable to the more than 11 billion barrels of recoverable oil and gas contained in Guyana’s Stabroek block, owned by Exxon, Hess and China’s CNOOC.