Fossil Energy – Namibia
Woodside Energy has decided not to take up an option to farm into petroleum exploration license 87 (PEL 87) in the Orange Basin offshore Namibia.
Pancontinental Orange will remain operator with a 75% interest, in partnership with Custos Investments (15%) and state-owned NAMCOR (10%).
The consortium will now seek to bring in an alternative partner to fund exploration drilling with the license’s first renewal exploration period due to terminate on Jan. 22, 2026.
Woodside agreed to fund a 6,593-sq-km 3D seismic survey over the license. Following the interpretation of the dataset, Pancontinental drew up an inventory of leads and prospects that it believes are similar in size and scale to discoveries made to date in neighbouring deepwater blocks in the basin.
Among the stronger candidates identified for drilling are the Oryx prospect in turbidite sands within the PEL 87 Saturn complex.
The Hyrax prospect in the southern part of the same complex is a slightly younger reservoir target than at Oryx, with the turbiditic sands thought to be more strongly affected by winnowing from blue water currents.
Xerux is another prospect in the central northern portion of the Saturn complex.
