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SNEPCO, the UK major Shell’s deepwater upstream subsidiary in Nigeria, has agreed to purchase TGS/Petrodata’s Multiclient Ocean Bottom Node (OBN) three dimensional (3D) seismic data, as well as the Multbeam Seafloor Samling data, for $24Million.

The ‘Awele South 3D Seismic 2023’ project encompasses approximately 5,900 square kilometres within a designated 56,000 square kilometres area awarded to TGS/Petrodata by NUPRC as Petroleum Exploration Licence.

The Multibeam project is a regional multi-client, geochemical  Multibeam and Seafloor Sampling (MB&SS) Study, covering an area of approximately 80,000 square kilometres of the offshore Niger Delta and incorporating around 150 cores from the seabed, which target multibeam backscatter anomalies.

SNEPCO’s purchase also includes TGS/Petrodata’s extensive regional 2D reprocessed data.

For the ‘Awele South 3D Seismic 2023’, completed in early 2024, TGS/Petrodata benefited from prefunding by Chevron, who bet $45Million on the project. With its pre-funding, Chevron was able to influence the architecture of the data gathering. The US major relied on the interpretation of the OBN data to determine the location of the infill well drilling campaign on the Agbami field, which is planned for 2027.

SNEPCO, on its part, is hoping to utilise the data for better understanding of both its Bonga satellites (OML 118) and the Nnwa Doro structure, a natural gas accumulation located in OML118.

Canadian independent inadvertently “launched” the ongoing Namibian rush in 2021, but it has been careful about the choice of a noun to describe its latest result in a previously unexplored onshore basin.

ReconAfrica refrained from calling its latest well  a discovery despite reporting that it  encountered ~400 metres (~1,300 feet) of gross hydrocarbon section, identified on wireline logs.

The Canadian junior interpreted 64 metres of that column as net hydrocarbon pay in the  Kavango West 1X  well,  “verified by wireline logs and supported by mud log anomalies”.

The well was drilled on Petroleum Exploration Licence (PEL) 73, onshore Namibia.

Beneath this pay zone is an additional 61 metres (200 feet) of hydrocarbon shows, “identified in the deeper sections, where interpreted natural fractures in the limestone reservoir occur”, the company continues. All of these wireline verified hydrocarbons and mudlog shows are in the target Otavi carbonate section.

A production test, scheduled for the first quarter of 2026, will determine what this hit is.

“The results from this well have allowed the Company to proceed to a success case evaluation, which includes conducting a production test of prospective intervals to determine deliverability characteristics from the well”, ReconAfrica declares.

The Toronto listed independent has so far drilled five wells, three of them classed “stratigraphic tests”, over the last four years. Its commencement of drilling in 2021 was the immediate preface to the ongoing, sustained Namibian exploration rush.

Five months before Shell spud Graf-1 in the country’s deepwater Orange basin, ReconAfrica  had drilled two stratigraphic test wells, using gravity data, targeting the Karoo rift  in the previously unregarded sedimentary miogeosyncline, called the Kavango Basin onshore northern Namibia.  The 6-1 and 6-2 wells, the company reported, intersected over 300 metres and 200metres of oil and gas shows respectively. Makandina 8-2, which was ReconAfrica’s third well in the basin, was the company’s first seismically defined probe in the campaign. It failed to encounter economic accumulations of hydrocarbons because of the absence of a trap.

Meanwhile, the two dimensional (2D) seismic data, acquired in early 2023,  confirmed the “Damara Fold Belt”, a significant new play type initially identified SW of the Karoo Rift in the southern and western parts of the 25,000 square kilometre PEL 73. This fold belt consists of a very prominent and clearly imaged series of anticlinal structures, also known as Whaleback anticlines (See the seismic sections in the feature image). The company applied for drilling permits for six Damara locations.

ReconAfrica finalised the  Naingopo-1 well in January 2025, encountering over 50 metre net reservoir in the Otavi Group, derived from log analysis and indications of oil, “which will be further confirmed from side wall cores”. It had planned to drill the Kambundu prospect after Naigopo, but the latter’s results, integrated into the overall subsurface data, convinced the company to move to  Kavango West-1X  ahead of Kambundu.

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The Norwegian oil producer BW Energy, has contracted a rig for the drilling of the Kharas appraisal well on the Kudu licence (PPL003) in the Orange Basin, offshore Namibia.

The Deepsea Mira semi-submersible, operated by Northern Ocean Ltd., will drill the long awaited well on the Kudu structure as part of the scheduled rig-sharing arrangement in which Rhino Resources Ltd also gets to drill is own third well in the prospective Petroleum Exploration Licence (PEL) 85, where it has reported two oil discoveries: Sagittarius-1X and Capricornus-1X  in the last eight months.

Kharas will be the ninth well on the Greater Kudu structure and the first drilling since Tullow Oil’s disappointing Kudu-8 appraisal well failed to account for the additional reserves needed to signal development. “The results of the logging programme indicated production from the well would not exceed the 19Million standard cubic feet per day (MMscf/d) rate recorded at Kudu-5”, Tullow reported at the time, in late 2007.

BW Energy claims in a statement released July 28, 2025 that “the contract (entered with Northern Ocean Ltd for Deepsea Mira), provides access to an in-country rig and an experienced services team with a strong track record in the Orange Basin, supported by a high level of local content”.

BW Energy concluded its farm in into the Kudu field acreage in February 2017 as BW Offshore, before the company then spun off BW Energy as a quasi-independent entity, working as E&P operator, as part of the BW Group. The company took a 56% stake at the time, with NAMCOR, the state hydrocarbon company, holding a 44% stake.  As the Namibian state was unwilling to invest in what could have led to a gas to wire project, BW Energy assumed more of the stake in the Kudu production licence with a 95% working interest. NAMCOR E&P now holds the remaining 5% carried interest.

Angola’s largest homegrown independent Etu Energias has announced the arrival of the Chinese owned Jack up rig SMS ESSA Probe for a multi-well drilling and re-entry campaign on its Block 2/05 in shallow offshore Congo Basin.

The company will drill at least three development wells, probe one exploration location and carry out five work overs in existing wells.

Angola’s National Oil, Gas and Biofuels (ANPG) Agency, the upstream regulator, says that the drilling programme  is in line with the minimum commitment assumed by Etu Energias and partners, and is an essential component of the growth strategy”, which it, approves.

Etu Energias operates Block 2/05 with 30% interest. The asset produces around 14,000Barrels of Oil Per Day. Etu Energias’ partners on the block are majorly other Angolan independents, including Falcon Oil, Prodoil, Kotoil and Poliedro, who collectively hold 70%.

The campaign is an indication of how seriously Etu Energias wants to optimize the resources in Block 2/05, its signature asset. The company is in the process of completing the sale of  its 10% stake in Block 3/05 and 13.34% in Block 3/05A, also in the shallow waters of the country’s Lower Congo Basin, to Afentra, the London listed minnow, and Maurel et Prom (M&P), the Paris based player.

Manufactured in 2020 at the COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry shipyards and equipped to operate in water depths of up to 30 metres, the SMS ESSA Probe is classified as “fit for purpose” and brings with it high-performance technical capabilities.

Cameroon’s near-decade-long wait for drilling in its Thali licence is set to end later this year, following the award of a rig contract by the operator, UK-listed exploration company Tower Resources.

Tower Resources said it has now awarded a contract for a rig to drill the NJOM-3 well in Thali to Saudi services company ADES, for one of the contractor’s 48 jack-up rigs. The NJOM-3 drilling is likely to be done using ADES’ 2019-build Admarine 510 jack-up rig, which is currently undergoing its five-yearly recertification in Bahrain.

In a pattern that has become familiar over the last nine years, Tower Resources said earlier this month that it submitted a fresh application to Cameroon for “the further extension of the current exploration period of the Thali licence”. But the government asked “to see the final rig selection completed so that they can see more clearly what extension may be required”. Cameroon granted Tower Resources a Thali licence production sharing contract (PSC) for a three-year exploration period in September 2015.

In securing an ADES jack-up rig, the UK-listed exploration company benefitted from an opportunity for lower rig mobilisation and demobilisation costs and the contractor’s market expansion drive. Tower Resources said the ADES’ jack-up rig first got a separate contract to drill in Cameroon in late 2025 from Addax Petroleum Cameroon, a subsidiary of China’s Sinopec in the country. The difficulty of coordinating timing with Addax Petroleum Cameroon was more than offset by the “favourable terms” that ADES offered. ADES has also been looking for opportunities to enter new markets since Saudi Aramco suspended contracts for its rigs in 2024.

Early in 2025, ADES secured an entry into neighbouring Nigeria when it got a rig contract from upstream operator Britannia-U, which aims to unlock new production of 25,000BOPD of oil and 23MMscfd of gas under a $283Million revised field development plan.

Tower Resources said it planned to drill the NJOM-3 well last year but financing activities did not align with the 2024 rig schedule offered by Norwegian rig contractor Borr. The company’s improved fortunes in 2025 follows a farm-out agreement with Pakistan’s Prime Global Energies that was announced at the beginning of this year, which secured $15Million of additional capital in exchange for a 42.5% Thali licence stake. Approval for the farm-out agreement, along with the application for an exploration period extension, awaits government approval.

The shallow-water Thali licence, in the Rio del Rey basin, was formerly part of the Dissoni oil block that was included in TOTALEnergies’ 2010 divestment of its Cameroonian assets to Anglo-French independent Perenco Energy. The Thali licence spans 119km² that Perenco gave up after it started production from the Dissoni field, having selected the area it wanted covered by its production lease.

Rio del Rey is an eastern sub-basin of the Niger Delta and accounts for about 70% of Cameroon’s oil production. Tower Resources said it has successfully optimised the location and design of the NJOM-3 well based on 3D seismic data that it reprocessed using the AI-driven Paradise workbench software in 2023. The new location was chosen so that the well “encounters the thicker sections of the largest number of target reservoirs, while also minimising the exposure to potential gas caps in the reservoirs”.

Tower Resources said its base case plan after drilling NJOM-3 is to “test it and then suspend it”. But the company is also considering options to put the well on “longer term test and production” while preparing to drill additional production wells. A Thali licence valuation completed for Tower Resources by consultancy Oilfield International in 2020 projected that a first phase could target a best-estimate 12Million barrels of crude oil in recoverable reserves with four wells. Under the terms of the PSC, Tower Resources could operate a two-year extended production test, using a leased mobile offshore production unit and a shuttle tanker that will evacuate the production 25km to Cameroon’s Massongo floating storage and offloading (FSO) facility for export, according to Oilfield International.

Tower Resources’ NJOM-3 well is expected to be drilled before the ADES jack-up rig starts its work for Addax Petroleum Cameroon in Fourth Quarter (Q4) 2025.