QatarEnergy, BP deals mark Namibia’s shift from wildcat frontier to majors’ basin

Namibia’s offshore acreage is changing hands. A series of deals this year has shifted operatorship of several licences to BP (LSE:BP; NYSE:BP) and TotalEnergies (EPA:TTE; NYSE:TTE) and brought QatarEnergy and Equinor (OSE:EQNR; NYSE:EQNR) into more acreage operated by Chevron (NYSE:CVX), as the country waits for the final investment decision (FID) on its first offshore oil development.

In two cases, smaller players are making way: Eco (Atlantic) Oil & Gas (AIM:ECO; TSXV:EOG) has handed operatorship of its Walvis Basin licences to BP, and Trago Energy, a Custos subsidiary, is selling its stake in PEL 90 to Chevron.

The latest came on November 9, when QatarEnergy agreed to take 25% of Chevron’s Petroleum Exploration Licence 82 (PEL 82) in the Walvis Basin, IntelliNews reported. Once the deal closes, Chevron will keep 55% and operatorship, while state-owned NAMCOR and privately held Custos Energy will hold 10% each.

If approved and completed, PEL 82 would be QatarEnergy’s fifth Namibian exploration licence, adding Walvis Basin acreage to its stakes in PEL 39, operated by Shell (LSE:SHEL; NYSE:SHEL), Chevron-operated PEL 90 and the TotalEnergies-operated PEL 91 and PEL 56, which contains the Venus discovery. Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, QatarEnergy’s president and CEO and Qatar’s minister of state for energy affairs, said the deal would “expand and diversify our footprint in Namibia”, Offshore Engineer reported.

On the same day, BP completed its takeover of operatorship of PEL 97, PEL 99 and PEL 100 in the Walvis Basin from Eco, after Namibia’s minister of industries, mines and energy signed the transfer deeds. The deal had received final government approval in October.

BP holds 60% of each licence, Eco keeps 25%, NAMCOR holds 10% and local partners 5%. BP will carry Eco’s share, and its proportionate share of the NAMCOR and local partners’ interests, during the first renewal exploration period, and Eco is due to receive $2.7mn in cash on November 16. A 3D seismic survey covering at least 3,000 sq km is due to start in the coming weeks on PEL 99 and PEL 100, with seismic reprocessing planned on PEL 97.

Eco’s president and CEO, Gil Holzman, described the farm-down, agreed in April, as part of a strategy of “partnering with supermajors” to derisk the company’s portfolio, Rigzone reported.

The majors have also tightened their grip on the Orange Basin, home to Namibia’s major offshore oil discoveries, including Venus and Mopane. In September, TotalEnergies took over operatorship of Galp’s (Euronext Lisbon:GALP) Mopane discovery, taking a 40% operated interest in PEL 83 through an asset swap that gave Galp 10% of PEL 56 and 9.39% of PEL 91. The swap made TotalEnergies operator of the country’s two largest oil finds.

In August, Equinor agreed to buy 17.4% of PEL 90 from a Chevron subsidiary, its first upstream entry into a new country since 2017. Chevron has since agreed to take the 10% held by Trago Energy, a Custos subsidiary, for $11mn in cash plus potential contingent payments. If both deals close, Chevron would hold 45.1% of PEL 90, QatarEnergy 27.5%, Equinor 17.4% and NAMCOR 10%.

Who holds what: Namibia’s main offshore licences

*Pending regulatory approval. Stakes after announced deals. Sources: company statements, IntelliNews.

Not every independent is leaving. Privately held Rhino Resources still operates PEL 85 with 42.5%, matched by the 42.5% held by Azule Energy, the joint venture between BP and Eni (BIT:ENI; NYSE:E), which gives BP a foothold in the Orange Basin as well.

The licence has yielded three discoveries since early 2025 – the Capricornus-1X and Sagittarius-1X oil finds and the Volans-1X gas-condensate discovery – and in June the Capricornus-1A appraisal well, spudded on May 2, found an oil-bearing reservoir connected to the original discovery.

Rhino has said it wants to be “first to first oil” in the Orange Basin, targeting first oil as soon as 2030, S&P Global reported. Its chief executive, Travis Smithard, said in October 2025 that the company aimed to take an FID on its own development by the end of 2026 or early 2027.

The incoming majors bring balance sheets suited to the next phase, when deepwater developments will need far more capital than exploration. Exploration spending has already eased, however.

Oil and gas drew about NAD74.4bn ($4.5bn) of foreign direct investment between 2021 and 2025, roughly 56% of the total, but Namibia’s net FDI inflows fell to NAD25.1bn in 2025 from NAD35.9bn in 2024, a decline the Bank of Namibia attributed largely to lower equity injections into exploration and appraisal.

Some finds have disappointed. Shell wrote down its PEL 39 discoveries in January 2025 after concluding that their resources could not then be confirmed for commercial development, and Chevron’s Kapana-1X well on PEL 90 found no commercial hydrocarbons that year.

The shift has drawn scrutiny at home. Writing in the Namibian, John Grobler, a Namibia-based associate of the investigative unit Oxpeckers, argued that weak regulation and limited in-house technical expertise had tilted the Orange Basin in favour of foreign majors. Citing NAMCOR data from August 2025, he reported that international oil companies had bought available shares in licences despite an informal moratorium on issuing or changing the ownership of exploration licences.

Venus remains the test. TotalEnergies says the project is technically ready for sanction, with front-end engineering complete and main contractors selected, but its FID depends on concluding fiscal talks with the government.

The company had aimed to decide by mid-2026 and said in August that a decision should come before 2027. With the year nearly over, talks with the government were still under way in mid-October, World Oil reported, citing Bloomberg. Meren Energy (TSX:MER; Nasdaq Stockholm:MER) has said the first phase targets recovery of around 750mn barrels, with plateau oil output of about 150,000 barrels per day (bpd) and potential first oil in 2030.

At Mopane, TotalEnergies has outlined a development of more than 200,000 bpd, with a possible FID in 2028. Sintana Energy (TSXV:SEI; AIM:SEI), which holds an indirect stake through Custos, has said TotalEnergies is targeting first oil in 2032.

The African Energy Chamber expects FIDs on Namibian developments in 2027 and 2028, it said in its latest upstream investment outlook, which puts Africa’s annual upstream investment at about $40bn.

The drilling outlook beyond this year is thin. Chevron plans to drill the Nabba-1X well on PEL 90 before the end of 2026 and is considering a well at the Gemsbok prospect on PEL 82 in 2027. TotalEnergies plans three exploration and appraisal wells at Mopane across 2026 and 2027, with the first due to start in the fourth quarter of 2026, while BP’s initial work on the Walvis Basin licences focuses on seismic.

Namibia’s port operator Namport is pressing ahead regardless, targeting early 2027 to start construction of new oil-service berths at Walvis Bay.

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