MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Namibia en route to becoming another Guyana oil discovery success story

The Mopane field in offshore Namibia could contain some 10 billion barrels of oil.

Portugal's oil company Galp Energia shares skyrocketed on Monday after the company announced that the first phase of its exploration in the Mopane field in offshore Namibia could contain some 10 billion barrels of oil.

This follows on Galp operations at the Mopane-1X well in January and the Mopane-2X well in March, with, “significant light oil columns discovered in high-quality reservoir sands.”

The so called Mopane field, at the Orange Basin, also includes Shell and Total with Galp already extracting 122,000 bpd in 2023.

The Galp discovery at Mopane field has been compared to Guyana’s Stabroek block, an 6.6 million acre (26,800 square kilometers) area owned by US Exxon Mobil Corp, Hess Corp and China's CNOOC.

Exxon is main operator of the block with a 45% stake while Hess and CNOOC own 30% and 25%, respectively

Galp plans to sell development of the project, most likely to be a major international energy company with a strong track record in project management. Galp has hired Bank of America to run the sale process, with proceeds likely to be in the billions of dollars.

The Mopane discovery--one the largest made in the nascent basin following successful exploration campaigns by rivals TotalEnergies and Shell--could help kick-start the southern African country, a former German colony, oil industry. In recent years, Namibia has attracted huge interest from international oil companies seeking to grow their production.