Namibia could soon join the league of oil producers in Africa, creating major opportunity for the project cargo sector.According to a recent Africa Oil Week report, Namibia’s nascent upstream oil and gas sector has for some time been focused on exploration, with no commercial production to date. Until recently, however, exploration success was elusive, but the significant discovery of light oil with associated gas offshore Namibia could be a serious game-changer.Shell Energies in January announced it had discovered oil off the Namibian coast at its Graff well, followed by TotalEnergies who shortly after that said it had also discovered approximately 84 metres of net oil pay at its Venus prospect, located in block 2913B in the Orange Basin.While there has been much hype around both discoveries, it is still early days. Both TotalEnergies and Shell expedited appraisal work, while the Namibian government has said it wants to see production of oil as early as 2026. The country’s only other major find has been the Kudu gas field, but this has lain undeveloped for nearly 50 years – although some development around gas-to-power is currently ongoing.According to the report, both Graff and Venus hold multi-billion barrel potential.
