Australian player eyeing entry into Namibia’s frontier basin

Australia-headquartered exploration and production company Grand Gulf Energy has entered into a binding option agreement to acquire Wrangel, an applicant for a working interest in a petroleum exploration license (PEL) in the Walvis Basin, offshore Namibia.

If the acquisition goes through, Grand Gulf could gain access to a 70% working interest (WI) in the petroleum exploration license (PEL) over Block 2312, which has yet to be granted to Wrangel. The latter filed an application for the license in partnership with Namibia’s TSE Oil and Gas (20%) and the state-owned National Petroleum Corporation of Namibia (NAMCOR) (10%).

Since Grand Gulf’s acquisition and payment are contingent on the granting of the PEL, which was previously operated by Chariot Limited, this is interpreted as a low-cost opportunity to enter “one of the world’s most prospective frontier basins.”

Block 2312 covers an area of 16,800 square kilometers in water depths ranging from 1,400 meters to 2,000 meters. It is located near the Murombe-1 and Wingat-1 exploration wells, which Grand Gulf considers instrumental in establishing the prospectivity of offshore Namibia. 

The area has been bustling with activity in recent years, drawing the attention of global heavyweights as well, including Shell, Chevron, TotalEnergies, and Galp. The Australian firm says this has resulted in over 11 billion barrels of oil discovered to date, with seven wells scheduled to be drilled this year, including two by TotalEnergies.

After drilling 17 exploration wells and six appraisal wells, the overall success rate in the Orange Basin from 2022 to early 2025 is said to exceed 80%. The Graff-1 oil well, drilled offshore Namibia by Shell in 2022, is thought to have catapulted Namibia to the forefront of global oil exploration. 

Shortly after the Graff discovery, TotalEnergies reported an even larger multi-billion-barrel discovery with the Venus-1 well that same year, and Galp’s Mopane-1X oil and condensate discovery followed a year later. 

As for Block 2312, the only drilled well tested Prospect S, encountering what Grand Gulf says are high-quality reservoirs with clear seismic signatures. The well, drilled by Chariot in 2018, was to be plugged and abandoned at the time.

Around 6,100 square kilometers of 3D seismic in the north of the block and 4,700 line kilometres of 2D seismic with an average line spacing of 8-10 kilometers are available. Grand Gulf claims to have undertaken a comprehensive technical review of all available data, which has confirmed the prospectivity of Block 2312. 

As reported, data collected from the Prospect S well has significantly upgraded exploration targets to the northeast, such as Prospect B, along with targets that have access to the outboard oil kitchen, such as Prospects W and V.

Technical work going forward will include a focused re-evaluation of the seismic characteristics of the Prospect S reservoir and nearby features, aiming to evaluate the ability of seismic attributes to predict hydrocarbon presence across the block’s most prospective targets.