Namibia’s petroleum officials have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with their Angolan counterparts, essentially about holding their hands in navigating the terrain of regulating the development of the series of oil discoveries Namibia is walking into. The MoU, between Namibia’s Directorate of Petroleum Affairs and Angola’s National Petroleum, Gas and Biofuels Agency (ANPG) aims to promote bilateral cooperation in the Oil and Gas sector between the institutions, based on mutual benefits between the two countries, strengthening and intensifying cooperation in the Oil and Gas Industry.
“We are going to train the Namibians so that they can assume the responsibility of producing in Namibia”, remarks Paulino Jeronimo Chairman of the Board of Directors of ANPG. “The training will not take place in an office, but in a task force because we have accumulated experience with different operators and we want to make use of this aspect to help in the training of Namibians. Remember that the national workforce in Angola is 80% and it is our expectation that Namibia will gradually reach this level”.
The MoU was inked in the course of the Namibia International Energy Conference held in Windhoek, under the motto “Shaping the future of energy for value creation”.
Namibia has hosted a number of huge discoveries of oil and gas in its deepwater acreages since 2021. By some analysis, the large tanks encountered by Shell and TOTAL under the Namibian portion of the South Atlantic could hold up to six billion barrels of hydrocarbons. But the country has never seen any hydrocarbon discover through to development.
Namibia and Angola will now, after this agreement, move on elaboration, approval and execution of the Action Plan, according to a release by the ANPG.
The MoU follows up on an earlier MOU signed between the Ministry of Natural Resources, Oil and Gas of Angola and the Ministry of Energy and Mines of the Republic of Namibia, on the 29th of November last year, during the Angola Oil and Gas Conference.
The Angolan delegation, headed by the Chairman of the ANPG, was made up of the Executive Director, Belarmino Chitangueleca, the Director of Negotiations, Alcides Andrade, the Coordinator of the Biofuels Nucleus, Vita Mateso, Exploration and Negotiation Specialists, Adriano Sebastião and Hermenegildo Buila, respectively, as well as technicians from various areas assigned to the Concessionaire.
