The OPEC+ oil producers group, having lost Angola and other players in recent years, is eyeing Namibia for possible membership as it sets up what could be Africa\u2019s fourth-largest output by the next decade, an African industry official and sources told Reuters.<\/p>\n
TotalEnergies\u00a0and Shell\u00a0in recent years have made discoveries estimated at 2.6 billion barrels, setting the stage for the southern African country to plan production from about 2030.<\/p>\n
The initial focus for OPEC+ would be to see Namibia join its Charter of Cooperation, the sources said, a grouping that engages in longer-term dialogue about energy markets. Brazil joined the charter in January.<\/p>\n
Eventually OPEC, the core oil exporters group that with Russia and others forms OPEC+, would like to see Namibia become a full member, said NJ Ayuk, executive chairman of the African Energy Chamber, which he said had been involved in facilitating talks between the two sides.<\/p>\n
OPEC has begun its “charm offensive”, he said, adding that the outcome of the talks were unclear at this stage.<\/p>\n
OPEC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. OPEC Secretary-general Haitham Al Ghais was quoted in February as saying OPEC was holding talks with several nations on joining the charter, without naming them.<\/p>\n
OPEC in a tweet at the time said Al Ghais met Namibian Minister of Mines and Energy Tom Alweendo at a conference in Nigeria where the prospect of OPEC and Namibia working together “under the umbrella of the charter of cooperation” was raised.<\/p>\n
Last year, Namibian Petroleum Commissioner Maggy Shino\u00a0expressed interest\u00a0in joining the OPEC “family”, according to a report by S&P Commodity Insights, known as Platts.<\/p>\n
Yet in March, minister Alweendo told Reuters that OPEC membership was not on the cards and did not want to be drawn on whether Namibia was considering joining the charter.<\/p>\n
“We haven’t been approached by anyone to join OPEC. OPEC members are petroleum exporting countries and we are not there yet,” he said. “That is a consideration only after we have started to produce.”<\/p>\n
Talks between OPEC and the Namibian government will likely continue in late April, however, when OPEC’s Al Ghais is scheduled to deliver an address to a Namibian energy conference, said Ayuk, who is also a speaker at the event.<\/p>\n
NEXT DECADE<\/strong><\/p>\n About 2.6 billion barrels of oil have been discovered in Namibia this decade so far, Pranav Joshi of energy consultancy Rystad Energy told Reuters.<\/p>\n In addition to Total and Shell, firms including Chevron, Rhino Resources, Eco Atlantic Oil & Gas and Galp Energia are conducting exploration and appraisal activities.<\/p>\n Based on the existing discoveries, Namibia is looking at 700,000 barrels per day (bpd) of peak production capacity by the next decade, Joshi estimated.<\/p>\n That is smaller than Angola’s output of some 1.1 million bpd but Joshi noted Namibia’s number could rise with further successful exploration.<\/p>\n Angola quit OPEC in December of last year over a lower-than-expected output ceiling it received from OPEC+ whose members are curbing production to help support prices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The OPEC+ oil producers group, having lost Angola and other players in recent years, is eyeing Namibia for possible membership as it sets up what could be Africa\u2019s fourth-largest output by the next decade, an African industry official and sources told Reuters. TotalEnergies\u00a0and Shell\u00a0in recent years have made discoveries estimated at 2.6 billion barrels, setting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11454,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":10,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"Reuters","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"0","show_view_counter":"0","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"0","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"0","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"0","show_popup_post":"0","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":"","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"","hide":""},"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,30],"tags":[275,60,1204],"class_list":["post-11453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-southern-africa","tag-angola","tag-namibia","tag-opec"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}