Portugal’s Galp Energia has resumed discussions with potential partners to develop its significant oil and gas discovery in Namibia’s offshore Mopane field.
The company made the announcement on Monday, following a 29% year-on-year drop in its adjusted core profit for Q1 2025.
In December 2024, Galp announced a major discovery of light oil and gas condensate at its fifth exploratory well in the Mopane prospect, located in the Orange Basin off Namibia’s coast.
“This well unlocked a new exciting area within Mopane,” said Galp Co-CEO Maria João Carioca during a conference call with analysts. “We are advancing with feasibility studies in the coming months.”
Galp holds an 80% operating stake in Mopane, within Petroleum Exploration Licence (PEL) 83, which is estimated to contain around 2.79 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe).
The remaining 20% is split between Namibia’s state-owned Namcor and local partner Custos Energy.
As part of its development strategy, Galp is actively looking to farm down a portion of its stake and bring in a strategic partner to assume operatorship of the asset.
“A partnership is our natural and preferred next step,” Carioca said. “We are re-engaging with interested parties we’ve had conversations with before, and data is now being shared with them.”
Namibia’s offshore basin has increasingly become a hotspot for global energy companies, with recent high-profile discoveries by Shell, TotalEnergies, and now Galp reinforcing its appeal.
Despite progress in Namibia, Galp’s Q1 2025 financials highlight a difficult operating environment.
The company reported adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) of $761 million—down from a year earlier, but slightly above analyst expectations of $758.4 million.
Refining margins declined sharply to $5.60 per barrel in the first quarter, down from $12 per barrel a year ago.
Working interest production also dipped 3% year-on-year to 104,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd), impacted by planned maintenance downtime.
The average Brent crude price fell to $75.70 per barrel from $83.20 in the prior-year period.
Galp’s upstream division, largely driven by its Brazilian pre-salt assets, posted a 32% decline in core profit.
Overall, adjusted net profit dropped 41% to $218.65 million, though it still beat analyst forecasts of $210.68 million, buoyed by lower tax expenses.
The company reiterated its full-year production guidance of over 105,000 boepd, despite Q1 disruptions already accounting for more than 40% of scheduled annual maintenance.
Shares of Galp fell 3% in afternoon trading following the earnings report.
Galp stated that the subdued financial performance urges the need to share capital expenditures and operational risks through partnerships, particularly for large-scale upstream projects.
Earlier this month, the company finalised the sale of its upstream assets in Mozambique for $881 million, a move aimed at optimizing its global portfolio.
