Namibia expects first oil and gas from its offshore oil blocks as early as 2029, according to the country's petroleum commissioner Maggy Shino.
Oil and gas production is on track to begin by that time, Shino said, with a first field development plan set to be received from TotalEnergies by July. The French major is a stakeholder in the Venus block, which it estimates to contain 750mn bl.
The timeline announcement comes as Namibia seeks to accelerate the path to first oil, Shino said. Windhoek is streamlining licensing processes and is encouraging industry to contribute to upstream policymaking, she told the Invest in African Energies forum today.
TotalEnergies, which discovered Venus in February 2022, plans to make a decision on whether to begin the development of the field next year. Its chief executive Patrick Pouyanne said he was negotiating with the Namibian government about the development but that discussions were still at an early stage.
"It's a project which faces, fundamentally, some challenges, but it's feasible," Pouyanne told analysts on the company's first-quarter earnings call in April.
Speaking at the conference, TotalEnergies' senior vice president for Africa, Mike Sangster, said the three wells the company has tested at Venus have demonstrated the need for a lot of gas reinjection, and he said it will be difficult to keep the cost of development down to Pouyanne's publicly-stated $20/bl.
Besides upstream investment, Namibia is encouraging investors to consider port and pipeline infrastructure with a particular emphasis on the coastal town of Lüderitz in the southwest.
Namibia's new president, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, placed the country's oil and gas industries under direct presidential control the day after her inauguration in March. Although details of the restructuring have yet to emerge, some stakeholders hope the move will speed up decision making.
