Letter from South Africa: Optimism reigns but challenges lurk

Large discoveries alone are not enough to guarantee Namibia makes a success of Africa’s most promising frontier

Two large, headline-grabbing oil discoveries have been made offshore Namibia in the Orange Basin. Shell and TotalEnergies have made what seem to be very sizeable finds with Graff and Venus, respectively. But Namibia becoming the next big oil hub in Africa is not as easy as it might seem. From a commercial perspective, the fact that both finds are predominantly oil is clearly a good thing. From an emissions perspective, perhaps not so much. So what is it going to take to get these two fields into production? First and foremost, more appraisal is needed to gain a better idea of the volumes in place and potential recoverable reserves. Appraisal will also help answer some of the massive hype aro