By Dhiladhila Magazine · Issue 02

Behind the ten-billion-barrel number stands an unusual cast: a mid-major operator, a national champion and a local independent.

Behind the number – ten billion barrels – stand a handful of companies that will decide whether Mopane becomes a field or stays a headline. The find Galp announced on 21 April 2024, which Reuters counted among the basin’s biggest to date, belongs not to a single major but to an unusual mix of operator, national champion and local independent.

The line-up on the PEL 83 licence is the story. Galp Energia, a mid-sized Portuguese operator, runs the block with 80 per cent; NAMCOR, the national oil company, and Custos Energy, a Namibian independent, hold 10 per cent each. It is a smaller cast than a discovery this size usually attracts, and that shapes what happens next.

Galp, the mid-major that drilled it

Galp is not a super-major, and that matters. A company of its size proving a complex this large has stretched to do so, drilling the Mopane-1X well that struck light oil in January 2024 and the Mopane-2X follow-up in March, where tests flowed at the maximum permitted rate of 14,000 barrels a day. The result is larger than the operator can comfortably develop alone.

That mismatch defines Galp’s position. It has the discovery and the operatorship but will likely need a bigger partner’s balance sheet to build the field, which is why its own statements pointed toward sharing the cost and risk of the next phase.

The operator is big enough to find Mopane but probably too small to build it alone.

Custos and the local independent's stake

The most striking name is Custos Energy, a Namibian independent holding 10 per cent of one of the world’s notable recent finds. Its exposure runs through a chain that reaches global markets – the Canadian-listed Sintana Energy holds an indirect 49 per cent of Custos – so a small local company sits inside a structure that lets outside capital ride alongside it.

For Namibian enterprise, Custos is the proof that a domestic firm can hold a real stake in a major field rather than watching from the shore. How that stake is managed will be studied by every local company hoping to follow.

Custos is the test of whether a Namibian independent can hold its ground in a giant field.

NAMCOR, carrying the national interest

NAMCOR, the state oil company, holds the other 10 per cent, carried by Galp through first sales like Custos. Its role is to convert a working interest into national benefit – revenue, skills and a seat at the operating table – and its capacity to do so is itself under scrutiny as the discoveries mount around it.

That makes NAMCOR the operator to watch on the public side. A national oil company that manages its carried stakes well anchors the country’s benefit; one that does not leaves the value to flow past the state it represents.

NAMCOR’s job is to turn a carried 10 per cent into national return, not just national presence.

The operators the field still needs

The cast on PEL 83 today is an exploration cast. Developing Mopane will summon others – a likely farm-in partner with deepwater production experience, contractors, and the Namibian firms a local-content policy intends to bring in. The people who found the field are not necessarily the ones who will run it in production.

That handover is where discoveries are won or lost. A find proven by a mid-major and two small partners needs a wider bench to become a producing asset, and assembling that bench is the operators’ next task.

Finding Mopane took a small cast; producing it will need a much larger one.

For an investor, partner or policymaker, the operators of Mopane are the real due-diligence subject: a stretched mid-major, a listed-backed local independent and a national oil company, none yet sized to develop the field alone. The decision each faces is the same – whom to bring in next – and the farm-in that answers it will determine who ultimately controls the largest oil find in Namibia’s history.

Sources: Reuters; Galp Energia, Custos Energy again strike oil offshore Namibia (World Oil); Custos Energy acknowledges Namibia’s PEL 83 potential (Oil Review Africa)