Namibia has entered formal negotiations with TotalEnergies over the Venus deepwater oil project, opening a critical path toward a Final Investment Decision (FID) targeted for the fourth quarter of 2026, officials said Wednesday. (
The move follows the government’s review of TotalEnergies’ Field Development Plan (FDP), the technical blueprint for developing Venus, a deepwater discovery in Namibia’s offshore Orange Basin. The project, which could generate up to €12 billion in state revenue over 25 years, is widely seen as a defining test of the country’s institutional capacity and its first major commercial oil venture.
Prime Minister Tjitunga Elijah Ngurare confirmed that the upstream petroleum unit housed in the presidency had begun a technical assessment of the FDP. Petroleum Commissioner Maggy Shino, speaking at the Invest in Africa Energy forum in Paris, said TotalEnergies aims to reach an FID before year-end, with first oil expected between 2029 and 2030.
“It’s not just about resource extraction — it’s about building capacity and creating lasting value for our people,” said Tom Alweendo, Namibia’s Minister of Mines and Energy. Venus lies in waters exceeding 3,000 meters, roughly 300 kilometers offshore, with an estimated 2 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Fiscal modeling suggests most tax revenues would only materialize past the mid-2030s, once development costs are fully amortized.
The Venus consortium is led by TotalEnergies, which would hold 35.25 percent after a stake transfer from Portuguese explorer Galp Energica, while QatarEnergy also takes 35.25 percent and Namibia’s national oil company, NAMCOR, retains 10%. Planned production would be processed through a floating production, storage, and offloading vessel with output revised to 150,000 barrels per day.
More Read
Negotiations hinge on complex fiscal trade-offs. TotalEnergies has reportedly set a commercial threshold of $20 per barrel production cost to justify FID. Namibia, meanwhile, is exploring credit support instruments and international lending partnerships to finance NAMCOR’s 10% stake. The country’s 1991 Petroleum Act has never been tested on a project of this scale, prompting the government to submit revisions to parliament, alongside consultations on local content policy.
Unemployment, officially 36.9 percent, is among the highest in the Southern African Development Community, giving local content requirements heightened political significance. But Namibia currently lacks a subcontracting ecosystem capable of supporting the scale of Venus development, creating a further negotiation challenge.
Venus also holds 4.8 trillion cubic feet of associated gas, which has sparked a bilateral dispute. Namibia wants the gas piped ashore for domestic power generation, while TotalEnergies prefers reinjection into the reservoir to sustain oil output, highlighting a technical impasse that could complicate the FDP review.
Previous offshore setbacks, including Shell’s $400 million write-down of Graff and Jonker discoveries in 2025 and court challenges to TotalEnergies’ environmental permits, underscore the region’s regulatory fragility. Analysts caution that Venus’ ultimate success depends as much on Namibia’s institutional readiness as on geological factors.
The parliamentary process for the revised petroleum law and resolution of the gas dispute are now central to whether Namibia meets the FID target. If cleared, Venus could start construction with first oil in 2029, setting a long-term revenue stream that extends beyond the current government’s term and potentially reshaping Namibia’s economy.
