Chevron says it wants to drill an exploration well on PEL 90 this December after fast-tracking its 3D seismic acquisition campaign.
The company’s country manager for Namibia and Suriname, Channa Kurukulasuriya, told the delegates attending the Namibia International Energy Conference outside just outside Windhoek.
Kurukulasuriya said Chevron entered the exploration license on PEL 90 in October 2022.
“By Q1 2023, we completed our 3D seismic acquisition, which is a record speed in Namibia.
“We are planning to drill our first exploration well this year, so from license execution to drilling a well, the timeline is two years,” Kurukulasuriya said.
ExxonMobil director of South Atlantic Exploration, Richard Barke, said oil and gas will be a critical part of the global energy mix for years.
“We need to keep exploring,” Barke said.
According to Barke, his company wants to bring the model they used in Guyana to Namibia.
“In Guyana, we have spent $1.2 billion with local suppliers and we have over 1,500 qualified Guyanese suppliers and over 6,000 Guyanese workers contributing to these developments. That is the vision we seek to emulate in Namibia,” Barke said.
Namcor interim managing director Ebson Uanguta said the reserves of the deposits in Namibia are getting better and better with each discovery.
“Looking at the data at our disposal, this is just the beginning,” Uanguta said.
He added that they see these oil discoveries having a tremendous impact on GDP growth – the size of the economy is likely to triple.
Galp, head of Upstream Special Projects Adriano Bastos, said they had 15 Namibian companies operating alongside them.
Bastos added that 15% of the workforce were Namibians, and 25% were women.
“The impact we can bring is to help entrepreneurs create solutions and activities that the industry will utilize,” Bastos said.
Woodside Energy’s vice president of new ventures, James Parr, said three types of partnerships exist.
He said the first is on a technical basis with co-owners such as Namcor and service providers.
The second is with the government, which sets the stage, and the third is with resource owners – local communities.
The three, together with OPEC’s head of the Energy Department, Dr Abderrezak Benyoucef, were panellists in the session titled Navigating the Road to Success: Namibia’s Upstream Oil & Gas Industry, which ExxonMobil sponsored.
African Energy Chamber executive chairperson NK Ayuk was the moderator.
