Industry leaders have said that Africa’s oil and gas sector is on the brink of a new exploration renaissance. The leaders believe that quicker permitting, upgraded seismic imaging and more developed frontier data sets would go a long way towards making the dream a reality.
Speaking at Africa Energy Week (AEW): Invest in African Energies 2025 in Cape Town, Emmanuelle Garinet, VP of Exploration Africa at TotalEnergies, revealed that Africa’s frontier basins should not be undermined.
Pointing to Namibia as an example of how seismic and subsurface data can de-risk projects, Emmanuelle stated that there is a higher chance of success as long as the right tools are employed.
Praising the fast exploration permitting process, she declared that drilling is only delayed when permits are granted late.
“When we decided to drill the Venus well, it was frontier, but we had a probability of success of more than 50% because of the seismic data and direct hydrocarbon indicators.
We got our permit in less than six months and are preparing for drilling by the end of the year,” she said.
South Africa’s permitting system, on the other hand, is often slowed down by legal issues, an issue Emmanuelle tagged unacceptable, given restricted budgets for global exploration.
Revealing that the role of comprehensive subsurface datasets in Africa cannot be overemphasised, Chevron’s CEO, Gavin Lewis, maintained that they are absolutely key to illuminating what the subsurface looks like.
“Before you can do any AI-driven workflows, you need a dataset that illuminates what the subsurface looks like. What Africa has lost is the ability to sponsor multi-client subsurface datasets.
The only basin that allows for large, regional high-quality datasets is the Gulf of America, which has allowed that basin to reinvent itself multiple times,” he stated.
VP of Exploration for bp, Bryan Ritchie, further highlighted survey work in Egypt’s Nile Delta, where the company wrapped up the first deepwater ocean-bottom node seismic survey over the Atoll field.
He concluded by noting that the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company plans to expand multi-client data coverage across a larger area of the delta.
“We’re seeing new opportunities for these images,” he added.
