How Namibia Pulled Ahead In Africa’s Hottest Offshore Oil Basin
Namibia is rapidly emerging as Africa’s next major oil producer while neighboring South Africa, which controls roughly two-thirds of the same Orange Basin petroleum province, remains years behind in developing essentially the same petroleum system. The Orange Basin, an offshore deepwater petroleum province spanning the Atlantic maritime border between the two countries, is estimated to contain more than 20 billion barrels of oil equivalent. Yet while Namibia has attracted a succession of world-class discoveries and moved rapidly toward commercial development, South Africa has struggled to translate the same geological opportunity into producing assets.
TotalEnergies' (NYSE:TTE) deepwater Venus Project in offshore Namibia now targets an initial production capacity of roughly 150,000 barrels of oil per day, with first oil aimed for 2030. Venus-1X is estimated to contain 1.5 billion barrels of light crude and 4.8 trillion cubic feet of gas. TotalEnergies has also taken over operations of the massive Mopane discovery from Portugal’s Galp Energia (OTCPK:GLPEF).
Last month, Shell Plc (NYSE:SHEL) and its JV partners reported a major oil discovery at the Merlin-1X exploration well within Petroleum Exploration Licence 39 (PEL 39). Located in Namibia’s Orange Basin roughly 290 kilometers off the coast, the resource has recoverable reserves estimated at 750 million barrels for Phase 1. The success of Merlin-1X marks a critical turnaround for the consortium.
In early 2025, Shell booked a $400 million impairment on its Namibian offshore portfolio following engineering hurdles at older discovery wells with complex geology and high gas-to-oil ratios, including Graff-1X and Jonker-1X. Those challenges had initially slowed commercialization plans, but the Merlin-1X discovery has significantly improved the outlook for the company’s Namibian acreage.
In contrast, South Africa has made little progress here, despite owning two-thirds of the basin.
South Africa’s largest undeveloped offshore gasLocated in Oranger Basin’s Block 2A, the Ibhubesi Gas Field is South Africa’s largest undeveloped offshore gas field, holding an estimated 540 billion cubic feet of natural gas and 4.3 million barrels of condensate. Back in 2022, Eco Atlantic Oil & Gas drilled the Gazania-1 Well in South Africa's West Coast to a depth of 2,360 meters but failed to find sufficient volumes for commercial drilling. However, legal challenges and regulatory hurdles have also played a big role in encumbering South Africa’s progress.
Namibia's rapid ascent as a global deepwater oil hub in the Orange Basin has largely been driven by its stable, single-window regulatory model, while South Africa is encumbered by layers of permitting bottlenecks. Namibia’s Ministry of Mines and Energy, alongside the national oil company NAMCOR, provides international operators with predictable timelines and transparent licensing processes.
Namibia has paired world-class geology with one of Africa’s fastest and most predictable petroleum licensing systems. The Ministry of Mines and Energy and state-owned NAMCOR operate under a standardized Model Petroleum Agreement, a transparent fiscal regime that includes a 35% petroleum income tax and a 5% royalty, and clearly defined approval timelines. As a result, international operators have been able to move discoveries into appraisal at remarkable speed, with exploration and appraisal permits typically secured within three to nine months. In South Africa, by contrast, overlapping regulatory authority and prolonged approval processes can stretch permitting timelines to as long as five years.
Meanwhile, ongoing environmental litigation has also delayed numerous oil and gas wells expected to be drilled in South Africa in the coming years.
In March 2026, activists and fishing cooperatives petitioned the High Court to rescind permits for up to 10 ultra-deep-water exploration wells off the West Coast. Last year, the Western Cape High Court overturned environmental authorization for TotalEnergies and Shell to drill along the southwest coast, with the court citing critical failures in assessing oil spill impacts on small-scale fishers. A landmark October 2025 court ruling also invalidated environmental authorization for a proposed Eskom gas-to-power plant in Richards Bay. Meanwhile, a foundational 2021 lawsuit filed by local communities blocked a Shell seismic survey, with a definitive precedent-setting ruling expected later this year from South Africa's highest court.
" We cannot explore, we cannot spend money in a geography if we have to face courts permanently and the permitting becomes really too complex," TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne lamented during the company’s earnings presentation.
South Africa’s Minister of Mineral and Petroleum Resources Gwede Mantashe has pushed for specialized energy courts to address delays from environmental lawsuits, citing blocked offshore oil and gas projects by companies like Shell and TotalEnergies. Mantashe contends that regular legal challenges reflect a resistance to national progress, prompting the push for fast-tracked dispute mechanisms.
