AfrOil: Venus-1x may be sub-Saharan Africa’s largest oil find

UK-based Wood Mackenzie, a prominent energy consultancy, has speculated that the Venus discovery announced last week by TotalEnergies (France) at the PEL 56 licence area offshore Namibia may be the largest oil find ever made in sub-Saharan Africa.

In a confidential report, the consultancy said that in light of results from the Venus-1x wildcat well, it now “conservatively estimates recoverable oil volumes of over 3bn barrels,” the report said. If this figure is accurate, it said, Venus stands to become the largest oil find ever made in sub-Saharan Africa.

Wood Mackenzie also talked up the possibility of further big discoveries, saying: “Exploration potential beyond Venus is equally enticing.” Upstream said it had heard similar speculation from other observers and quoted one source in southern Africa as saying that the Venus West structure had the potential to be around the same size as Venus – and that the two structures might even be connected.