Our about 1 hour go11 Jan 2018 10:09
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Offshore Namibia: braced for big finds
Interest in Namibia’s developing offshore oil and gas frontier is strengthening, with companies such as Tullow Oil, Total, and others making investments in recent years. Yet, despite high expectations for the geology, only small volumes of hydrocarbons have ever been produced. But is this about to change? Heidi Vella finds out.
Bordered by resource rich South Africa, Angola and Botswana and the long inhospitable coastline of the South Atlantic, Namibia is an African nation that stands out for its stable governance, small population and millions of acres of desert and bushland.
Like its neighbours, Namibia is rich in natural, mostly mineral, resources that largely sustain the country’s roughly 2.5 million population.
Due to its reliance on diamonds, gold, coal, uranium, copper and rare earth minerals, the recent stint of low commodity prices has impacted the country negatively; it experienced substantially slower economic growth in 2016 (1.2%), according to the World Bank.
The country, which still suffers from extreme socio-economic inequalities despite its high public spending on social programmes, is therefore looking to develop new revenue streams and offshore oil and gas is one sector that shows strong potential.
In the past, Namibia’s offshore prospects have been largely overlooked, but since 2014, when a number of international oil and gas companies, such as Tullow Oil and Repsol, started taking an interest, the sector has picked up.
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