Africa’s oil and gasoline sector could possibly be getting ready to a brand new exploration renaissance, pushed by advances in seismic imaging, frontier knowledge units and sooner allowing, business leaders stated at Africa Vitality Week (AEW) 2025.
In response to Emmanuelle Garinet, VP of Exploration Africa at TotalEnergies, Africa’s frontier basins maintain important volumes. She pointed to Namibia for instance of how seismic and subsurface knowledge can de-risk tasks: “After we determined to drill the Venus nicely, it was frontier, however we had a chance of success of greater than 50% due to the seismic knowledge and direct hydrocarbon indicators.”
Within the Republic of Congo, TotalEnergies’ exploration allowing course of is shifting at a markedly sooner tempo. “We acquired our allow in lower than six months and are getting ready for drilling by the tip of the 12 months,” Garinet stated. In contrast, South Africa’s allowing system has confronted delays resulting from authorized challenges, an issue she described as “unacceptable” given restricted budgets for international exploration.
After we determined to drill the Venus nicely, it was frontier, however we had a chance of success of greater than 50% due to the seismic knowledge and direct hydrocarbon indicators
Common Supervisor New Ventures, Gavin Lewis, emphasised the crucial function of complete subsurface datasets in Africa. “Earlier than you are able to do any AI-driven workflows, you want a dataset that illuminates what the subsurface appears like,” he stated. “What Africa has misplaced is the power to sponsor multi-client subsurface datasets. The one basin that enables for giant, regional high-quality datasets is the Gulf of America, which has allowed that basin to reinvent itself a number of occasions.”
VP of Exploration for bp, Bryan Ritchie, highlighted survey work in Egypt’s Nile Delta, the place the corporate accomplished the primary deepwater ocean-bottom node seismic survey over the Atoll discipline and famous that the Egyptian Pure Gasoline Holding Firm plans to increase multi-client knowledge protection throughout a bigger space of the delta. ‘We’re seeing new alternatives for these photos,” he stated.
Past exploration, Woodside Vitality’s VP of Exploration, Terry Gebhardt, stated geoscience and subsurface knowledge are additionally key to carbon seize and storage tasks, in addition to “maximizing efficacy and restoration” in current fields.
The panel dialogue, sponsored by EnerGeo Alliance, additionally underlined the broader scale of funding in Africa’s oil and gasoline sector. Nikki Martin, President and CEO of EnerGeo Alliance, stated African oil and gasoline capital expenditure is anticipated to rise to $54 billion by 2030, following a $6 billion surge in exploration spending in 2024.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of African Vitality Chamber.