British multinational oil and gas company, Shell, plans to allocate 25% of its 2023 and 2024 budget for deepwater exploration on its oil and gas discoveries in the Orange Basin, offshore Namibia.
The budget will fund the drilling of an exploration well, an appraisal well and one flow test well over the next six to nine months. The objective is for Shell to assess the hydrocarbon reserves in its four discoveries – Graff, La Rona, Lesedi, and Jonker – within the basin and formulate a resource development strategy.
“We continue to like what we see. What’s particularly pleasing is that all of those wells drilled have been top quartile across every benchmark that we find in the wells space,” said Sawan, adding that “So, as important as making a discovery is, making sure that we can actually outcompete when we drill those wells is a key area that we’re focused on,” CEO Wael Sawan said.