TotalEnergies Chief Executive Officer Patrick Pouyanné says the company is looking to grow its footprint in Namibia’s oil sector beyond the Venus project, even as the deepwater discovery remains the group’s top priority.
“Venus today is a priority, but it’s clear that TotalEnergies is willing to use Venus as a base to try to move forward and to grow in Namibia, and we are looking to different opportunities to do it,” Pouyanné said.
The French oil major is currently in talks with the Namibian government to extend the licence for the Venus field, which is estimated to hold between 700 million and 800 million barrels of reserves. Pouyanné noted that the company’s immediate focus is building trust with authorities.
“We see today, our priority is to build the trust with the Namibian authorities in order to move forward. It will be the first project in Namibia. And of course, we are looking for more because there is an interest for us to find synergies for development because it’s just the beginning,” he explained.
Pouyanné said Namibia’s entry into the oil industry has sparked interest across the supply chain.
“I think today, the industry, I see that the contracting industry, all our suppliers are very excited by Namibia because they see that new country for oil as being potentially a good area for them to grow. We have interesting, I would say, very attractive offers, which match with our budget. So it’s good news,” he added.
He also outlined the technical challenges of Venus. “We have today in our hand a project called Venus. There is a lot of 700 million to 800 million barrels of oil. There is one difficulty as we already expressed — the permeability is low. So that means that in order to sweep the oil, we need to reinject the gas, that will limit the plateau of production to 150,000 barrels per day, which is quite interesting,” Pouyanné said.
While production is expected to be lower than some deepwater projects, output will last longer.
“On a typical deepwater project like in Suriname with this type of reserves, 800 million barrels, normally, you make a plateau of 200,000 to 220,000. It will be longer. That’s why we have entered into a discussion with the authorities to extend the licence for a longer duration,” he stated.
On exploration activity, Pouyanné confirmed that work continues both in Namibia and neighbouring South Africa. “Venus oil project — we have exploration. We continue to explore on our licence. The Orange Basin is continuing in South Africa, and we intend to drill that next year. We still have one or two wells to do on our licence there,” he said.
TotalEnergies has postponed its Final Investment Decision (FID) on Venus to 2026, having initially planned to decide by the end of 2025.
Discovered in 2022, the Venus field lies in Block 2913B, some 300 km from Oranjemund, 320 km from Lüderitz and 700 km from Walvis Bay, in waters about 3,000 metres deep.
The project is being developed by TotalEnergies EP Namibia B.V. (TEEPNA) in partnership with Impact Oil & Gas, NAMCOR and QatarEnergy.
The joint venture plans to drill up to 40 subsea wells, with hydrocarbons to be processed and stored on a Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel.
Once in production, the project is expected to create around 600 direct jobs, mainly for highly skilled workers on both offshore and onshore facilities.
