OREGEN Energy has enlisted the geoscientist responsible for the discovery of TotalEnergies’ offshore Namibia Venus prospect as its strategic adviser.
Oregen Energy is a Canadian investment firm that bought into Petrovena’s licence for oil block 2712A in the Orange Basin.
It announced last month that it has brought on board strategic adviser Phil Birch – an oil and gas exploration veteran in Namibia.
Birch last month told The Namibian he was excited to join Oregen after retiring from Impact Oil and Gas last year.
“When I saw this block [2712A] being competed for, I thought this is exciting, and I’d like to help whoever licenses this block in the end,” he said.
Birch’s story in Namibia began in the early 2010s. At the time, Birch owned a company called Black Star Petroleum and was interested in exploring along the west coast of Africa.
“Shell had just taken the acreage next door to where I wanted to explore, so I contacted Mr Mulunga, who was then the petroleum commissioner, with Maggy Shino working as his assistant. They recommended that I speak to Knowledge Katti,
who held this licence,” he said.
Katti agreed to let Black Star take 80% of the licence, Birch said, but Black Star didn’t have the funds to run a full exploration campaign.
Black Star then received an offer from Impact Oil and Gas to buy the company, together with the rights for the block.
Drilling the prospect would, however, cost at least US$100 million (about N$1.6 billion), Birch estimated.
“We started to look for a big integrated oil company as a partner. We spoke to all the big oil majors, and they all said no,
we don’t believe there’s going to be anything there,” Birch said.
There was no seismic data of the block in 2012.
“We recognised that the same source rocks that provided gas for the Kudu field should have expelled oil further to the west in the Venus block,” he said.
In addition, the presence of a canyon suggested there was a point where oil-containing sands would likely enter the ocean floor.
Impact eventually convinced TotalEnergies to farm in. In February 2022, the company announced a massive discovery of light oil on the block.
“That hunch just turned out to be right, but I’m telling you, it was a real guess,” Birch said.
He believes oil and gas could be transformational for Namibia.
“It’s going to be important for Namibia to get this right so that as many Namibians as possible can benefit from this great increase in national wealth that will hit the country.
“And this has to be done in a fair way that will last and build other industries to replace oil and gas, for example,” he said.
