TotalEnergies will be targeting a billion-barrel resource with its next deepwater well offshore Namibia, according to chief executive Patrick Pouyanne.
The Tamboti-1X probe is due to spud shortly in the northeast of Block 2913B which hosts the supermajor’s huge Venus discovery.
Fresh from completing what is thought to have been an unsuccessful exploration well on the Niamou prospect in Congo-Brazzaville waters, semi-submersible Deepsea Mira is en route to Walvis Bay to stock up on supplies before heading to the drilling location in the prolific Orange basin.
According to marine intelligence provider VesselsValue, the semisub is currently off Namibia’s Skeleton Coast.
During TotalEnergies’ strategy and outlook event in New York on Wednesday, its chief executive was asked by an analyst to give a pre-drill resource estimate for Tamboti.
The initial response of Pouyanne, who is normally reluctant to go public on resource numbers, was to say: “It’s big.”
When asked what “big” meant, he volunteered that Tamboti is an “elephant.”
After a short pause, Pouyanne revealed that “it’s a billion barrels,” although it is unclear if this is a recoverable number or oil-in-place (OIP) estimate.
Speaking at the same strategy event, the supermajor’s upstream boss Nicolas Terraz said Tamboti was “de-risked by a well drilled last year” on Mangetti.
The Mangetti-1X probe hit two reservoirs – which Upstream was previously told could hold 1.5 billion barrels of OIP – before drilling deeper to appraise the northern extent of Venus.
Given its nomenclature – 1X – it is assumed that Tamboti will target a prospect separate from Mangetti and Venus.
Upstream has been told that the Tamboti probe will not target Venus-age reservoir sands, which, together with Terraz’s comments, implies that it will be aiming for the shallower plays hit at the Mangetti well.
After completing Tamboti-1X, Terraz told analysts that TotalEnergies could drill recently identified prospects in the south of Block 2913B as well as “large” structures pinpointed in the company’s two blocks – DWOB and 3B/4B – in South Africa’s untested part of the deepwater Orange basin. Upstream