Namibia: New Oil Discovery Offshore Namibia

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(file photo)
10 June 2026
The Namibian (Windhoek)

QatarEnergy and Shell have announced a new oil discovery off the coast of Namibia.

The two oil companies are partners in petroleum exploration licence (PEL) 39 in the Orange Basin and announced the discovery on Tuesday.

"Shell, alongside its partners QatarEnergy and the National Petroleum Corporation of Namibia (Namcor), has reported encouraging exploration results from its Merlin-1X exploration well," Shell announced.

The Merlin-1X exploration well is the tenth well drilled in PEL39. Drilling began on 8 April.

Namcor is a joint venture partner in the licence, and says these results are the best of all the wells drilled in the licence so far.

"We at Namcor welcome the announcement of yet another discovery in offshore Namibia. It's particularly exciting that the well has delivered three things that we love to hear in this industry: good reservoir quality, light oil and limited associated gas," Namcor spokesperson Paulo Coelho said on Wednesday.

He added that this reinforces Namcor's confidence that the Orange Basin is a world class oil asset.

PEL39 is owned by QatarEnergy (45%) - a company owned entirely by the Qatari state - Shell (45%) and Namcor (10%).

Read the original article on Namibian.

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