TotalEnergies’ Venus project in Namibia’s Orange Basin is the kind of discovery that makes oil executives’ eyes light up and governments dream of windfalls. The discovery – made in February 2022 – was immediately recognized as one of the African continent’s largest in decades, with an estimated 1.5 billion barrels of light crude at 45 degrees API and 4.8 Tcf of natural gas. Expectations are high: peak output is projected at around 150,000 barrels a day and the field could remain productive for 30-40 years.
Africa’s oil and gas production is projected to reach 11.4 million barrels per day by 2026 on the back of rising offshore investments and intensified exploration, according to the State of African Energy 2026 Outlook set to be launched on 30 September.
Africa’s upstream oil and gas sector is showing strong momentum as regulatory reforms in key markets improve investor confidence and unlock new capital. Industry leaders emphasize that stable and transparent frameworks are proving critical to sustaining exploration and production growth across the continent.
STR operates globally with technology and service facilities in Aberdeen, Great Yarmouth, Houston, Perth, Singapore and invested £5m in a new Norway facility earlier this year which Christie will oversee. The company has doubled headcount in the last three years and now has 120 people with further growth to be delivered through strategic acquisitions, market expansion and a diversified technology and solutions offering, with plans to have a dedicated Middle East facility next year.
The contract will remain effective until September 30, 2025. Its value is between EUR 250 million and EUR 500 million.
Earlier this year, a senior company executive told Reuters Petrobras was looking to buy interest in African oil fields to boost its reserves and was in talks with potential sellers, including Exxon, Shell, and TotalEnergies. Petrobras’s proven oil and gas reserves increased by 500 million barrels last year, from 10.9 billion barrels to 11.4 billion barrels.
The Deep Value Driller (DVD) drillship, for which Saipem inked a bareboat charter agreement with Deep Value Driller, is in charge of the drilling operations that will be conducted around 60 nautical miles off Ghana’s coast, near the FPSO John Agyekum Kufour, as part of the broader Sankofa field’s development plan.
South Africa has officially launched the South African National Petroleum Company (SANPC), a new state-owned oil enterprise designed to consolidate and energize the country’s long-stalled hydrocarbons sector. Formed from the merger of PetroSA, iGas, and the Strategic Fuel Fund, SANPC will operate under the Central Energy Fund and is already integrating staff and assets to streamline operations. The aim? Reducing oil imports, bolstering energy security, and tapping into over R95 billion in potential investment.
Despite the growing emphasis on natural gas with international majors exploring and putting online gas projects and LNG export facilities around Africa, projections indicate that liquid hydrocarbons will still hold the lion’s share of capex, attracting 60% of the total investment through 2030. But natural gas is gradually gaining ground and its share of annual expenditure is set to increase from around 30% in 2023 to more than 40% by the end of the decade, the African Energy Chamber’s report says.
“This transaction is in line with Eni’s strategy aimed at optimizing upstream activities, through a rebalancing of the portfolio that provides for the early valorization of exploration discoveries through a reduction of participations in them (the so-called dual exploration model)”, Italy’s state-backed Eni said in an online statement Wednesday.