In 1974, the first offshore well was drilled in the Namibian Offshore basins. The Kudu-1 well, Orange Basin, discovered a strand gas field in Aptian aeolian sandstones. Since then, for the following almost 40 years, another 19 wells were drilled and failed to discover any liquid hydrocarbon, stablishing the gas-prone paradigm for all the Namibian offshore basins and halting further exploration activities in the region.
In 2013, the Brazilian company HRT Petroleum performed an integration of advanced oil geochemistry with 3D-PSDM seismic data interpretation and mapped several prospects that had a combined prospective resource of almost thirty billion barrels of oil in the Walvis-Bay and Orange basins. Following all the data analyses, HRT drilled two deep-water wells and tested two different play concepts, a Cretaceous carbonate platform, and a sand-rich turbidity system, in the deepwater of Walvis Basin (e.g., Wingat-1 and Murombe-1 wells). Both wells discovered good-quality, light oils (41o to 43o API, with GOR around 1,900 m3/m3), in good-quality, although very thin, upper Barremian/Aptian turbidity sandstone reservoirs.
Since February 2022, up to March 2024, seven wells have been drilled in a row, resulting in the consecutive discovery of six giant light-oil accumulations. The combined reserves found in Venuss discovery, made by Total Energies, Graff, La Rona, Jonker, and Lesedi, made by Shell, and Mopane, made by Galp, can surpass fifteen billion barrels of light oil/condensate in basin floor-fans, Lower and Upper Cretaceous in age, with good to excellent perm-porosity characteristics. All the deep-water discoveries were drilled in water depths that range from 2,000m3,200m. In conclusion, offshore Namibia is already, with only the recently giant to supergiant light oil discoveries, one of the largest hydrocarbon provinces of the South Atlantic Realm.