Namibia has approved TotalEnergies’ offshore asset swap with Galp Energia, handing the French major operatorship of both the Venus and Mopane discoveries and positioning the country to emerge as a significant oil producer before the decade is out.
TotalEnergies Chief Executive Officer Patrick Pouyanné confirmed that Namibia’s Ministry of Industries, Mines and Energy approved the transaction last week. Final administrative steps are expected to close within days.
The deal restructures ownership across three petroleum exploration licences — PEL 83, PEL 56, and PEL 91 — in Namibia’s offshore Orange Basin, a frontier deepwater region that has drawn intense investor attention since major discoveries were announced in recent years. TotalEnergies will assume operatorship of PEL 83, which holds the Mopane discovery, while Galp Energia will acquire minority stakes in the Venus licences covering PELs 56 and 91.
Under the terms of the swap, TotalEnergies acquires Galp’s 40% operated interest in PEL 83. In return, Galp receives a 10% participating interest in PEL 56 and a 9.39% participating interest in PEL 91.
TotalEnergies will also carry 50% of Galp’s exploration, appraisal, and early development costs in PEL 83, with those costs to be repaid from Galp’s future share of project cash flows.
Pouyanné said discussions with the Namibian government and consortium partners on the Venus development are nearing completion, with a final investment decision (FID) targeted for the end of July or shortly thereafter. He said aligning both projects under a coordinated development strategy would generate operational synergies across the Orange Basin.
Once the transaction closes, TotalEnergies plans to accelerate appraisal drilling at Mopane to define the resource base ahead of a separate investment decision targeted around 2028.
The consolidation gives TotalEnergies a commanding position across what are considered Namibia’s two largest offshore oil discoveries. Venus and Mopane together are widely expected to underpin Namibia’s transition into a material oil-producing nation — a development that would reshape sub-Saharan Africa’s upstream landscape and create new opportunities for investors tracking the region’s energy sector.
For international capital tracking African upstream expansion, the imminent Venus FID and the structured pathway to a Mopane decision represent a rare instance of back-to-back major project sanctions in a single frontier basin.
