Mozambique has effectively taken off. Namibia is waiting, hoping. Zimbawe is in a slow roll.
Nine months into lifting of the Force Majeure on the 13Million Tons Per Year Mozambique LNG project, TOTAL has reported construction to be 45% complete and first gas assured to be on stream by 2029. ExxonMobil has taken the most important logistics steps towards Final Investment Decision (FID) on the nearby 18.6MMTPA Rovuma LNG project and ENI is considering a third Floating LNG in the Coral complex.
As Mozambique eyes a set of large extraction facilities humming and spewing out liquified gas on the coast in Afungi, Namibia remains on the exploration spot.
TOTAL’s FID on the development of the Venus field, the country’s flagship hydrocarbon asset in Namibia is still in process. BW Energy’s Kharas-1, the highly anticipated appraisal well on the Kudu field drilled in 2025, encountered liquid hydrocarbons and de-risked reservoirs, but it neither advanced the prospects of Final Investment Decision by late 2026, nor moved the needle in the prospect for Namibian gas to power by 2027. ReconAfrica’s drilling of Kavango West-1 and testing, so far, of the Otavi carbonate reservoir, has not been convincing enough in terms of commerciality in an uncharted frontier basin. That reservoir is the primary target in the Damara Fold Belt in the onshore Okavango basin, straddling Namibia and Botswana.
In Zimbabwe, the last major physical drilling and discovery activity on the Mukuyu field was concluded in March 2024, when Australian firm, Invictus Energy, finished drilling and logging the Mukuyu-2 sidetrack well, onshore in the Cabora Bassa basin, in the north of the country.
The hydrocarbon opportunity grows dim In South Africa, the regional powerhouse. The Constitutional Court’s rejection of a proposal by Shell to acquire seismic data in the waters off the wild coast is part of a pattern of the ecosystem saying no to oil and gas exploration.
It’s a mixed bag. No regional bloc in Africa presents as compelling a story of hydrocarbon exploration, extraction or of rejection, as Southern Africa currently does.
The Africa Oil+Gas Report is the primer of the hydrocarbon industry on the continent. It is the go-to medium for decision makers, whether they be international corporations or local entrepreneurs, technical enterprises or financing institutions, for useful analyses of Africa’s oil and gas industry. Published since November 2001, AOGR is a monthly, e-copy publication delivered to subscribers around the world. Its website remains www.africaoilgasreport.com and the contact email address is info@africaoilgasreport.com. Contact telephone numbers at the headquarters in Lagos are +2347062420127, +2348036525979 and +2348023902519.
-Editor
