Advances in seismic imaging, frontier data sets and faster permitting could ignite a new exploration renaissance in Africa, industry leaders said Africa Energy Week (AEW): Invest in African Energies 2025 in Cape Town.
"Before you can do any AI-driven workflows, you need a dataset that illuminates what the subsurface looks like. The only basin that allows for large, regional high-quality datasets is the Gulf of America, which has allowed that basin to reinvent itself multiple times," Chevron's CEO, Gavin Lewis said.
Emmanuelle Garinet, VP of Exploration Africa at TotalEnergies pointed out that good data sets had helped derrick the Venus well in Namibia. Despite it being a frontier project, the exploration used the data to determine that it had more than a 50% probability of success.
Limited budgets mean that delays in obtaining permits become expensive for such projects, especially given the high capital costs already accounted. In the Republic of Congo, Garinet said, the company received its permit in less than six months. In other jurisdictions such as South Africa, legal challenges and other complexities often delay the permitting process, and with it, the project's probability of being completed on time and within budget.