Royal Dutch Shell is to drill offshore Namibia, a growing area of interest for oil and gas explorers.
Shell has taken over exploration blocks 2913A and 2914B in the Or¬ange Basin from Signet Petroleum, with the Anglo-Dutch group acquir¬ing a 90 percent stake in the two blocks and Namibian national oil company Namcor keeping its 10 percent car¬ried interest.
Signet Petroleum’s 42 percent shareholder Polo Resources, which is listed on London’s junior AIM market, said in a statement that it had sold its interests in the two blocks, “to a major international oil company in a confidential transaction”. Polo gave no indication of how much the interest had been sold for except to say that it expected a “significant return” for Polo, which would provide additional details as they become available.
Namibia is now attracting interest from oil and gas companies keen to explore its offshore potential, which has been likened to Brazil’s Santos basin. Shell was involved in explora¬tion work around the Kudu gas field in the Orange Basin, the only economi¬cally feasible fossil fuel find made so far in Namibian waters, but dropped out in 2002.
Spanish company Repsol said in October 2013 it would drill its first well in Namibian waters as early as February or March 2014, the Wel¬witschia-1 well in the Walvis Basin, in partnership with London-based Tower Resources.
