Drilling ops heat up offshore Namibia as Saipem rig moves to next well with more coming in 2025

Following its light oil and gas-condensate discovery in the first well within its second exploration and appraisal program, Portugal’s oil and gas company Galp has started drilling another well in the Orange Basin, where oil discoveries were also made during its first campaign within license PEL 83 off the coast of Namibia.

The Mopane 1-A appraisal well (well #3), Galp’s first of up to four wells that are part of a campaign potentially consisting of two exploration wells and two appraisal wells, was spud with Saipem’s Santorini drillship on October 23, 2024. The well is located in blocks 2813A and 2814B within the heart of Namibia’s Orange Basin, said to be emerging as one of the world’s most prospective oil and gas regions.

Recently, Galp confirmed the well encountered light oil and gas-condensate in high-quality reservoir-bearing sands within PEL 83, operated by a subsidiary of Galp Energia. Sintana maintains an indirect 49% interest in Custos Energy, which owns a 10% working interest in the license, while NAMCOR, the National Petroleum Company of Namibia, also maintains a 10% working interest.

Sintana, which disclosed an acceleration of operations offshore Namibia, including the drilling of the Mopane 2-A (well #4), has confirmed the partners decided to retain the Santorini drillship to continue the ongoing exploration and appraisal campaign during the southern hemisphere summer to avoid mobilization and demobilization costs.

As the Mopane-2A well was spud in nearby AVO-3, the firm also revealed the Mopane-3X (well #5) would be spud in early 2025 in AVOs 10 and 13 (stacked) taking advantage of newly processed 3D seismic. The upcoming activities are said to include a high-density and high-resolution proprietary 3D development seismic campaign over the Mopane complex set to start in December 2024.

Moreover, the firm underlines that results of Mopane-1A (well #3) show the well encountered light oil and gas-condensate in high-quality reservoir-bearing sands, once again indicating good porosities, high permeability, and high pressures, as well as low oil viscosity characteristics with minimum CO₂ and no H₂S concentrations.

Therefore, Sintana claims that together with the Mopane-1X (well #1) and Mopane-2X (well #2) findings, this appraisal well confirmed the extension and quality of AVO-1 and supported the acceleration of the program.

Robert Bose, Chief Executive Officer of Sintana, highlighted: “The acceleration of operations in this second campaign is emblematic of the ongoing progress at Mopane. We look forward to the exploration and appraisal activities anticipated over coming months to further unveil its world class scale and quality.”

The PEL 83 license is situated immediately north of Shell’s PEL 39 where the basin opening discoveries at Graff-1, La Rona-1, and Jonker-1 were made, and close to TotalEnergies’ multi-billion-barrel Venus-1 oil discovery on PEL 56.

The increasing interest in Namibia’s Orange Basin is confirmed by recent moves in the oil and gas industry, as illustrated by Africa Oil, which augmented its ownership interest in Impact Oil & Gas, securing a larger stake in a block with TotalEnergies’ Venus oil discovery.