Total Energy's intends to withdraw from gas projects south of South Africa

By Alimat Aliyeva

The French energy group Total Energies intends to withdraw from projects to develop deep-sea gas fields on the southern shelf of South Africa and concentrate its work on the western shelf of the African country. This was reported by Bloomberg, citing its own sources, Azernews reports.

Deep-sea southern deposits off the coast of South Africa have been recognized as commercially unprofitable, it notes.

In 2019, the French group discovered the Brulpadda gas condensate field, the largest in this part of Africa, with reserves of 1 billion barrels, on the southern shelf of South Africa. A year later, its specialists discovered another deep-sea gas condensate field near it. Total exploration costs cost TotalEnergies $400 million.

The possible withdrawal of the French group from projects south of South Africa is caused, among other things, by the desire to participate in the search for oil and gas in the Orange Basin area. The latter is located in the economic zones of South Africa and Namibia and is located west of the confluence of the Orange River into the Atlantic Ocean.

In recent years, significant deep-sea oil and gas deposits have been found in the Namibian sector of the Orange Basin. Last spring, TotalEnergies acquired licenses to search for oil and gas 200 km off the west coast of South Africa and south of a large oil and natural gas field that was discovered last year offshore neighboring Namibia.