Talks underway with potential partner to sign up for exploitation of oil prospect offshore Namibia

Global Petroleum, an AIM-listed oil and gas upstream exploration company presently focused on Africa and the Mediterranean, has engaged in discussions to secure a farm-in agreement with an undisclosed potential operating partner for its petroleum exploration license (PEL) 94 in Block 2011A in the Walvis Basin, off the coast of Namibia.

With the rise in planned offshore exploration activity in Namibia’s offshore, including the Walvis Basin, where Chevron recently made arrangements to assume an 80% operated interest in PEL 82, Global Petroleum claims that it has seen an uptick in interest in the data for PEL 94 from various parties. As a result, the company has entered into early commercial discussions with an unnamed potential operating partner for a farm-in agreement related to PEL 94.

The firm is hopeful it will be able to reach a mutually beneficial agreement in due course following further due diligence and negotiations. This license covers 5,798 square kilometers in water depths ranging from 450 to 1,550 meters. Namibia’s state-owned NAMCOR has a 17% carried interest and a private company, Aloe Investments Two Hundred and Two, has a 5% carried interest.

Global is renewing the annual license rental for 2024/2025 as it enters the second year of the first renewal period in September 2024, given its belief that a farm-in, if successfully concluded, could be “transformational” for the business, with a strategic partner potentially enabling the exploitation of the estimated 2,747 million barrels of oil on the license as part of unrisked net best estimate (P50) prospective resources.

The firm also held a formal representation meeting at the Ministry of Mines and Energy in Windhoek, Namibia where its plans were discussed. Global’s primary objective is to enhance shareholder value, thus, aside from oil and gas exploration prospects, it is actively assessing opportunities across the mineral resources sector to position itself as a multi-resource company with a diversified commodities portfolio.

According to the company, the entire Walvis Basin is under-explored with only eight wells drilled up to now by Norsk Hydro, Sasol, Ranger, HRT, Repsol, and, most recently in 2018, by Tullow and Chariot. Global regards the HRT-operated Wingat-1 well as being the most significant of the wells drilled in the Walvis Basin since liquid hydrocarbons were recovered from the Aptian interval, thus establishing for the first time that a source rock has charged oil into a trap in the Walvis Basin.

Furthermore, the company has mapped 3D and 2D seismic across the basin and this license, confirming that the source rock is present and can charge oil into the significant portfolio of prospects and leads. Since the firm had the license PEL 29, containing blocks 1910B and 2010A, for ten years until December 2020 and completed all license work program commitments, it plans to apply for a new license in due course.

Recently, the Namibian Ministry of Mines and Energy notified another company, Tower Resources, which holds a stake in Walvis Basin, of its agreement to the extension of the initial exploration period of the PEL 96 license to October 31, 2024, inviting it to apply for an extension lasting two to three years.

The UK firm has an 80% operated interest in the license, comprising blocks 1910A, 1911, and 1912B, covering 23,297 km² of the northern Walvis Basin and Dolphin Graben offshore Namibia.