Namcor chair: ‘Oil has been a game-changer’

After three decades of oil exploration, Namibia has “finally hit the jackpot”, Namcor chairperson Jennifer Comalie this morning told Bloomberg in a television interview at the sidelines of the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha.

Comalie referred to TotalEnergies’ and Shell’s announcements in February this year that they discovered oil offshore Namibia, and described it as a “game-changer”. However, both companies have said that the discoveries still await an appraisal stage to accurately determine the size and whether it is commercially viable.

Comalie described TotalEnergies’ Venus well as especially “exciting”. According to her, Venus is one of the top 20 global oil discoveries in the past decade.

Should Venus and Shell’s Graff-1 come to fruition, the two wells at their peak could bring up to US$5.6 billion to a “very small economy” and could double Namibia’s gross domestic product (GDP) by 2040, Comalie said.

“We are looking forward to having the resources to actually implement our plans we have for our socio-economic issues,” she told Bloomberg’s Manus Cranny.

Namibia has learnt from other African countries which discovered oil and gas that it “needs to be serious about local content”, Comalie said.

Namibia has the opportunity to still negotiate that local content with its partners when government comes closer to issuing production licences, she added.

According to Comalie: “The conversation in Namibia right now is what is going to be that local content.”