Galp strikes oil in Namibia

Portugal’s petroleum and natural gas company Galp has confirmed this month that it has discovered oil off the coast of Namibia at its Mopane – 1x well.

The company had already begun exploration in 2023 after it had opened offices in the country and has signed a two-year agreement with the Namibian government and its state-owned petrol company Namcor.
Namibia expects the first oil from major offshore finds by 2030 and will likely set up a Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) platform to help it export the crude oil.
The country, which has yet to produce any oil and gas, attracted strong interest from other international energy companies like Galp after Shell and TotalEnergies made discoveries off the coast of the southern African country.
The company has a Petroleum Exploration Licence 83 (PEL 83) and holds an 80% stake in PEL 83, which covers an area of almost 10,000 km2 in the Orange Basin, located in the southern part of Namibia’s waters, close to its border with South Africa.
Once the entire contractual structure had been finalised and the technical and human resources to carry out the exploration campaign had been put in place, a Hercules semi-submersible rig was set up. In November, 2022 exploratory plans for drilling on the sea bed — known as ‘spudding’ in the industry — were made with drilling beginning this year and now that investment has paid off.
Last year the company said that if it struck oil, the oil would be extremely profitable. In 2023 Galp doubled its profits to a record €881 million on the back of oil exploration.
Now the company has a long road ahead until it can make serious profits from these finds with the first barrels not expected to sell on the international market before 2023.