Venus hailed as discovery of the year
TotalEnergies deploys another drilling rig
Government is planning to announce a series of drilling projects by the end of this year that will take place during 2024.
TotalEnergies, in partnership with in partnership with QatarEnergy, Impact Oil & Gas and Namcor, have received Wood Mackenzie’s Discovery of the Year award for finding the Venus oil prospect offshore Namibia.“The Venus discovery made in 3 000 metres of water off Namibia is truly a play opener that has the entire industry very excited,” said Dr. Andrew Latham, senior vice president of energy research at Wood Mackenzie.
“If this project is able to move forward, it will establish an important new industry for Namibia,” Latham added, announcing the results of the 15th Wood Mackenzie Exploration Survey this week.
TotalEnergies was also named the upstream industry’s most-admired explorer in Wood Mackenzie’s industry-leading annual survey. It is the third time that French major has received this recognition.
“The industry continues to admire operators who can not only open new frontiers, but also find large volumes of advantaged resources. TotalEnergies recent efforts and discoveries have been excellent examples of both trends,” Latham said.
Massive investment
In February last year, TotalEnergies announced that it had discovered light oil at its Venus-1X well in the Orange Basin's block 2913B, just to the east of Shell’s Graff-1.
TotalEnergies is the operator of the project with a 40% working interest, alongside QatarEnergy (30%), Impact Oil and Gas (20%) and Namcor (10%).
TotalEnergies has committed US$300 million, half of its global exploration budget for 2023, on a four-well, two-rig exploration and appraisal campaign offshore Namibia. At the current exchange rate, that’s about N$5.6 billion.
Leading energy website Upstream recently reported that TotalEnergies hit reservoir with a critical appraisal well on its Venus-1A oil discovery, quoting a source saying that “the well has come in on target”.
Drilling
Major energy websites this week reported that offshore drilling rig owner Northern Ocean’s Deepsea Mira semi-submersible drilling rig had kicked off its drilling contract with TotalEnergies in Namibia.
“The contract with TotalEnergies has a firm duration of 300 days. TotalEnergies has two extension options, which, if exercised, would keep the 2019-built rig busy through all of 2024,” Oedigital reported.
Namibia has an ongoing drilling campaign with three rigs currently busy drilling appraisal and exploration wells, Maggy Shino, petroleum commissioner at the ministry of mines and energy, said during a webinar on Guyana-Namibia upstream trends on Wednesday.
The African Energy Chamber (AEC) partnered with global energy and commodities information provider S&P Global Commodity Insights for the event.
“We are expecting two more wells to be drilled before the end of 2023 in the deep waters,” the AEC quotes Shino.
She added that Namibia is seeing a rise in seismic surveys, and by the end of the year, government is planning to announcement a series of drilling projects that will take place during 2024.