Eleven billion barrels of oil and 2.2 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. This official estimate of Namibia’s fossil reserves, places the country along the Atlantic coast of southwest Africa among the “most promising new energy frontiers” Mohamed Hamel, secretary general of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECC), said at a recent energy conference in Namibia’s capital Windhoek (August 12-15).
In the meantime, global energy business is not losing sight of the fact that Africa currently has about 125 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, which was widely discussed at the African Energy Forum in Paris in May. Where there is oil in Africa, it is of persistent interest to foreign but also to the increasing number of domestic oil companies on the Black Continent.
As things stand now, the most oil in Africa is in: Libya (48.36 billion barrels), Nigeria (37.89 billion/b), Algeria (12.20 billion b), Angola (7.78 billion b), South Sudan (3.75 billion b), and the top ten also includes Egypt, Congo-Brazzaville, Uganda, Gabon and Chad.
And where else? American corporation “S&P Global” has an influential answer on that topic. Namely, “S&P Global” in its petro report “High Impact Wells 2025” points out that of all new oil finds discovered in the world last year, 35 percent were located in Africa, mostly in the less explored addresses (60 percent). One such “African location” – in Namibia, seems to stand out globally.
“Among more than 70 new global oil discoveries in 2024, three contained the largest reserves: in the Orange Sub region of the wider Southwest African Coastal Basin, Central Arabian Province and the Guyana Basin,” the S&P Global Report states.
Incidentally, in 2022, Shell, together with partners from Qatar and Namibia, confirmed that it had reached a “promising” oil vein in the Orange Sub region, south of the Namibian port of Walvis Bay, in the Atlantic Ocean 270 kilometres from the coast… How much oil and gas there is exactly, is not yet official, … nor in the nearby Kudu oil exploration zone …
OPEC seems not indifferent to this too.
So, it could happen that Namibia—after decades of sporadic and expensive exploration attempts by numerous mega-petro companies starting in the 1960s—soon (according to Windhoek’s expectations, as early as 2029) will emerge among the leading producers of “black gold” in Africa.
In this regard, Netumbo Nandi—Ndaitwah, the president of Namibia, is leaving nothing to chance. As recently as May, Nandi—Ndaitwah established a “upstream petroleum unit” within her cabinet to have direct control over the further development of the energy sector of the country of three million inhabitants on 824,292 square kilometres, and with a 1,572-kilometer coastline. “Namibia will not tolerate practices in the oil and gas industry that deny citizens their share of benefits ” Nandi-Ndaitwah warned at a recent conference in Windhoek.
