Petro Rio S.A. HRTPF

Spanish company starts drilling for oil in Namibia

[robnhood]

https://sun.com.na/business/spanish-company-starts-drilling-for-oil-in-namibia.65074

Spanish oil and gas company Repsol Namibia and its partners on Tuesday started drilling a well in the Walvis Bay Basin, Mines and Energy Minister Isak Katali announced.
Speaking during the Namibia Chamber of Commerce and Industry (NCCI) annual general meeting at Ongwediva on Tuesday, Katali said while there are high hopes that oil will soon be discovered in Namibia, any discovery of oil does not mean the effects will be felt immediately.
“It may take up to ten years before we can pump that oil into our cars,” he said.
Repsol Namibia and its partners, Tower Resources and Arcadia Expro Namibia, started drilling the Welwitschia-1 well in their licence blocks 1810A, 1911 and 2011A offshore Namibia.
The well is being drilled by the drill ship Rowan Renaissance, which has been contracted by Repsol for a period of three years.
Licence 0010 was one of the first issued in 2005 to Neptune Petroleum, which later brought in Arcadia Petroleum, which in turn brought in Repsol after a successful 3D seismic campaign.
Without mentioning Repsol, Katali said he was deeply disturbed that Exclusive Prospecting Licences (EPLs) that are awarded to Namibians have become get-rich-quick schemes.
“The owners or holders of these EPLs opt instead to sell them to the foreign mining speculators who in fact do not possess any mining background, let alone capacity and mining equipment.
“They also use the same EPLs to sell to multinational companies and use Namibians as mere proxies, with no or little influence on the decisions of running of the mines,” said Katali. The drilling of the test well is expected to be completed towards the end of May, with hopes of finding commercially viable amounts of oil this time around.
Katali later told Namibian Sun that Repsol Namibia and its partners would spend over N$1 million a day on the exercise.
“It is a very expensive exercise and the company only normally drills for a couple of months to see if they will make any discovery before moving along if there is nothing,” said Katali.
This is the seventh well to be drilled off the Namibian coast since 2008 and the 22nd offshore well since exploratory drilling started in Namibia in 1974.
In the last 10 years, over N$10 billion has been spent in Namibia on oil and gas exploration, with large exploration companies such as Tullow, Shell, Murphy, OMV and Impact buying shares in various blocks.
Last year the first oil in Namibia was discovered by Brazilian company HRT, though not in commercially viable amounts.
The discovery proved the existence of two mature source rocks and confirmed that there is an active petroleum system in the basins where the well was drilled.

[OilGold1]

Robnhood, you follow this area closely so I keep an eye on your posts. Your recent post has me puzzled in that 'Repsol's' Rowan Renaissance drill ship has recently completed a shake-down and has returned to Walvis Basin. My understanding is she will now soon head north and drill in Repsol's Block whereas the annoucement seems to suggest otherwise. CNQ and Total both announced a

[robnhood]

I have no idea if the article is true or not. I put the link in the post for all to see.

[OilGold1]

Many Thanks! ****

[robnhood]

https://www.rigzone.com/data/offshore_drilling_rigs/1714/Drillship/Rowan/Rowan_Renaissance

[OilGold1]

I use 'Marine Traffic', but thanks for passing that along, much appreciated, so too are the many great posts that are also applicable to EOG which I re-post giving your handle as the source. ****

[robnhood]

Under Tower Resource's News on my quote provider(ADVFN), they do not mention that drilling has started.