TotalEnergies discovers significant Namibian natural gas resource

The French major said the discovery was made on the Venus prospect, located in block 2913B and the Venus 1-X well encountered about 84 m of net oil pay.

“This discovery offshore Namibia and the very promising initial results prove the potential of this play in the Orange Basin, on which TotalEnergies owns an important position both in Namibia and South Africa,” said Kevin McLachlan, Senior Vice President at TotalEnergies.

“A comprehensive coring and logging programme has been completed. This will enable the preparation of appraisal operations designed to assess the commerciality of this discovery,” McLachlan added.

Block 2913B covers approximately 8215 km² in deep offshore Namibia.

TotalEnergies is the operator with a 40% working interest, alongside QatarEnergy with 30%, UK-based Impact Oil and Gas with 20%, while the National Petroleum Corporation of Namibia has 10%.

Major LNG producer QatarEnergy was delighted by the Namibia oil and gas success.

“We are pleased with this new discovery, which is our second in Namibia in a month, and we are encouraged by the promising results of the discovery well. I would like to congratulate our partners as well as the government of Namibia,” declared QatarEnergy’s President and Chief Executive Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi.

QatarEnergy holds interests in four blocks offshore Namibia, namely blocks 2912, 2913B, 2914B, and 2913A.

The latest discoveries are in water depths of 2500 m to 3250 m (8202 - 10 663 ft) adjacent to the South Africa maritime boundary.

The licence areas within the Orange River basin are shared between Namibia and its neighbour South Africa.

The Namibian success gives another southern African country access to oil and gas amid existing LNG production plans and projects involving TotalEnergies.

Northern neighbour Angola is the second largest oil producer in Sub-Saharan Africa, and uses associated gas to produce LNG as a clean energy source at its liquefaction plant, operated by the main shareholder, the US major Chevron Corp.

The LNG plant is just south of the Congo River delta at Soyo, and TotalEnergies is also a shareholder in Angola LNG along with Italy’s Eni, UK major BP, and Angolan state energy company Sonangol.

The Angola LNG plant is located 350 km north of the capital Luanda, and is an extremely modern LNG processing facility.

A pipeline network of over 500 km delivers gas from offshore oil fields to the Soyo plant, designed to process 1.1 billion ft³/d of natural gas and producer 5.2 million tpy of LNG.

In southeast Africa, TotalEnergies is leading a project to produce LNG in Mozambique from Rovuma Basin resources, delayed for two years by security issues.

However, the French major is hoping to restart the work soon on the Mozambican LNG project.

TotalEnergies has initially planned to build two liquefaction trains at the onshore plant in Cabo Delgado, each with capacity of 6.45 million tpy, and with the possibility of up to two additional trains and overall output of 25 million tpy.

The Rovuma Basin Area 1 licence has estimated resources of more than 60 trillion ft³ of gas, of which 36 trillion ft³ could be developed for the onshore plant.

Shareholders

The Area 1 shareholders, in addition to TotalEnergies, include Mozambican state-owned energy company ENG with 15%, Japan’s Mitsui & Co, three Indian companies, and Thailand’s PTTEP.

Mitsui has a 20% stake, the three Indian companies, ONGC Videsh, Bharat PetroResources, and Beas Rovuma Energy, each hold 10%, and PTTEP has 8.5%.

Another Indian company, Oil India Ltd, is also involved in the Area 1 Block through its 40% shareholding in Beas Rovuma Energy.

Read the article online at: https://www.lngindustry.com/liquid-natural-gas/11032022/totalenergies-discovers-significant-namibian-natural-gas-resource/