Namibia seismic shoot flags up big structure with 'billion-barrel' potential
Iain Esau
Africa Correspondent London
Privately owned Monitor Exploration has identified up to 11 exploration leads on a prospective licence onshore Namibia, where it plans to drill its first exploration well in 2025 or 2026.
Petroleum Exploration Licence (PEL) 93 is located in the frontier Owambo basin, just west of acreage in the Kavango basin controlled by ReconAfrica which recently completed its Naingopo-1 exploration well.
Monitor completed a 203-kilometre campaign in July and had hoped to complete final interpretation of this data this year.
However, although this process is taking slightly longer than planned, initial interpretation, said the company, supports previous studies about the licence’s prospectivity.
The most prospective structure identified appears to have characteristics that would give an explorer encouragement, with Monitor saying an “anticline is present at all prospective levels through the clastic Mulden sequence — where several reservoirs… are expected — and the Otavi carbonates.”
If this prospect is drilled, the primary target, said Monitor, would be the Otavi carbonates at a true vertical depth of about 3300 metres, with the Mulden sandstones, at 2070 metres, being the secondary objective.
A legacy wildcat in the area, Etosha-5-1A, offered encouragement about the main target producibility — if it does hold oil — because it flowed 1680 barrels per day of water during a drill stem test.
According to the operator, this structure covers an area of more than 100 square kilometres and has significant vertical relief with “clear access to hydrocarbon charge from source rocks which extend from directly beneath the structure to the main kitchen in the centre of the basin to the north.”
Robin Sutherland, Monitor’s senior technical advisor, told Upstream that a structure of this size could house huge amounts of oil and gas.
“It could easily be a billion-barrel field,” he stressed, adding that a find this big could be “inexpensive” to develop and could be brought on stream using a “fast-track” approach.
Further analysis and interpretation is ongoing in order to define the forward plan to mature prospects for drilling in 2025 or 2026, said Monitor, with Sutherland adding: “We are extremely pleased with the results of our 2024 2D seismic survey.”
London-listed 88 Energy — which struck a deal to acquire as much as 45% of the licence in late 2023 by paying for the 2D survey — said interpretation of the seismic data confirmed the presence of multiple significant leads in the southern area of PEL 93, each with large interpreted structural closures.
88 Energy said it has received the 2D seismic products from Monitor and aims to independently validate Monitor’s findings and work with its partners to integrate all available well log data, airborne geophysics, soil geochemistry together with the 2D seismic dataset.
A prospective resource estimate for PEL 93 is targeted for completion in the first half of 2025, said the farminee, which added that further geophysical activities may be carried out on PEL 93 before the next phase of a work-programme that calls for an exploration well to be drilled.
88 Energy said additional 2D seismic may be acquired over lead 11 which has recently emerged as a result of additional mapping by Monitor, based on existing gravity and geochemical data.
To get a better understanding of the Owambo basin, Monitor struck a collaborative agreement in October with Exito Energy Resources, operator of PEL 105, immediately to the east, to jointly advance exploration efforts.
By combining their expertise and resources, the companies aim to identify hydrocarbon potential by integrating remote sensing data with existing gravity, magnetic, geochemical, and passive seismic information.
Alex Warne, who previously worked for state oil company Namcor, set up Pioneer in 2006. His colleagues include Yuri Perez and Raydel Toirac, – who were previously advisors to Namibia’s Ministry of Mines & Energy under a bilateral agreement between Namibia and Cuba.
After completing initial collaborative work, Monitor and Exito could jointly carry out 2D surveys.
Exito may also bring in additional partners for the next exploration phase of PEL , 105 where Monitor has an option to take a stake.
Windhoek-based Pioneer Oil & Gas Consulting is acting as technical advisor to both companies’ exploration activities.
According to a previous assessment, Monitor said PEL 93 had the potential to hold 837 million barrels of risked oil resources or 3.6 trillion cubic feet of risked gas resource.
Monitor’s shareholders are five private individuals and GeoDynamics Worldwide, a company controlled by Andrew Shrager.
Shrager and his son control 60% of the company’s equity, with Geodynamics holding 6% of Monitor which was awarded PEL 93 in 2018.
Monitor currently has a 55% interest in the licence, with 88 Energy holding 20%. The remaining stakes are held by Legend Oil and state-owned Namcor, with 15% and 10%, respectively.