Beyond a Gas Master Plan: Planning for the Life of Namibia’s Gas System
Namibia needs more than a plan for developing known gas projects. It needs a strategy that connects resources, fields, infrastructure, contracts, markets and productive assets over the life of the system.
In the previous article, I ended by asking where Namibia brings together its understanding of the resource, development timing, reserves replacement, domestic demand, pricing, infrastructure, industrialisation and governance. The familiar answer is a Gas Master Plan.
But I have come to think that the term can be too narrow for what a country actually needs.
Gas Master Plans tend to focus on new projects: proven or commercially recoverable gas, the infrastructure required to move it, the markets that might use it and the economics of getting those projects built. Those are necessary questions. Namibia, however, has the opportunity to plan for something broader: the life of the gas system itself.
START UNDERGROUND
That system begins before gas reaches a pipeline. Decisions about field development, reinjection, production rates, appraisal and exploration determine how much gas becomes available, when, and for how long.
This is why I have argued for upstream resource orchestration: the State maintaining its own national view of discoveries, future resources, development sequencing, depletion, reserves replacement and infrastructure dependencies, while engaging operators as informed partners.
It does not mean Government replacing petroleum companies. It means understanding the national portfolio well enough to know how one project may affect the options available from another.
TotalEnergies’ approach to Venus and Mopane illustrates the logic. An operator naturally looks for synergies across projects. Namibia should be able to do the same across Venus, Mopane, Kudu, other discoveries and resources not yet found. A field that is relatively small in the portfolio of a major company may still matter greatly to a country if it can use spare infrastructure, supply existing industry or extend the life of assets already paid for.
LESSONS CHANGE WITH TIME
When I advised the Government of Mozambique through the World Bank in 2011–2012, before its Gas Master Plan was developed, Trinidad and Tobago offered an important example of what gas development could achieve: LNG, petrochemicals, power, infrastructure, skills and industrial capability.
Fifteen years later, Trinidad and Tobago offers another set of lessons. Gas supply has declined. Some industrial plants still have useful productive life but have faced shortages or curtailment. Smaller resources can become nationally important even when they do not compete strongly for capital within the portfolios of major operators.
Reserves replacement becomes critical once a large industrial system depends on continuing supply.
This suggests what might be called second-generation gas planning. The first challenge is how to build a gas industry. The later challenge is how to sustain and adapt the system once fields, plants, contracts and markets begin ageing at different rates.
THE MOLECULE MAY EXIST BUT STILL BE UNAVAILABLE
Contracts matter as much as geology. Large gas-processing, LNG or industrial projects often need long-term off-take agreements with creditworthy buyers before lenders will finance them. Those commitments may be exactly what makes the original investment possible. Yet a domestic or regional market that develops later may find that nearby product is already contractually committed elsewhere.
Physical design can create another barrier. A terminal designed around large export cargoes may not be able to load small vessels or road tankers safely or economically. Storage, loading arms, metering, berth design and operating procedures can determine who can actually access the product.
A molecule can therefore be available in the country and still be unavailable to the country – because of contract, price, infrastructure design or operating protocol. Namibia should consider, before facilities are built and long-term contracts signed, whether reasonable flexibility can be designed into the system for future domestic and regional users.
STRATEGY IS MORE THAN A PLAN
Perhaps the more useful description of what Namibia needs is an Integrated National Gas Resource and Development Strategy, supported by continuous gas master planning.
The strategy answers the higher-level questions: what does Namibia want gas to achieve, what value should be retained locally, what regional role should Namibia play, and what capabilities should remain after the resource declines?
Master planning then continually tests how to deliver those objectives as resources, prices, technologies and markets change. Individual fields, pipelines, power plants and industrial facilities sit beneath that process as projects to be designed, financed and operated.
The distinction matters because a strategy should outlive any one project, while continuous planning should prevent assumptions made for the first projects from becoming permanent constraints on everything that follows.
Namibia should also test its markets regionally. Kudu is already being considered for domestic and regional electricity or gas off-take, while the SADC Regional Gas Master Plan treats gas infrastructure as part of a wider regional development and industrialisation system.
Regional scale can alter project economics. Gas may move through a pipeline, but value may also move as electricity, fertiliser or another manufactured product. The question should not simply be where Namibia can sell gas, but which combination of domestic and regional uses creates the greatest durable value.
This final article began with a Gas Master Plan. It ends somewhere broader. Namibia should plan not only for the next field, pipeline or plant, but for the life of the system: resources still underground, fields that will decline, plants and infrastructure that may outlive them, contracts that can both enable and constrain markets, and institutions that must adapt as circumstances change.
The real prize is not simply producing gas. It is building a system capable of turning that gas into value long after the excitement of the first projects has passed.
-Anthony Paul is a senior energy governance, policy and strategy adviser
