The French giant braved one of the world’s fastest ocean currents to drill off South Africa’s coast, investing at least $400 million to discover an estimated 1 billion barrels equivalent of light liquid hydrocarbon at the Brulpadda field in 2019, Bloomberg reported.
They followed up with a successful find at the Luiperd well the next year, but neither discovery has advanced to the development stage.
Earlier this year, TotalEnergies announced plans to exit onshore oil operations in Nigeria, which accounts for 8 to 10 per cent of the company’s worldwide total production and over 18 per cent of its global investment.
Now, in South Africa, TotalEnergies plans to relinquish the license for Block 11B/12B due to doubts about the commercial viability of the complex deep-water discovery, given South Africa’s small gas market, according to sources who requested anonymity as the information isn’t public.
Instead, the company will focus on exploring the Orange Basin, located further north on South Africa’s Atlantic coast, near promising oil discoveries in Namibian waters.
Economic impact
An exit from these discoveries would be a setback for South Africa, which lacks domestic sources of oil and gas.
Potential production from these fields had been planned to help the country reduce its dependence on coal and provide feedstock for PetroSA’s 45,000-barrel-a-day gas-to-liquids plant, which currently relies on other depleted fields nearby.
