Minister of Mines and Energy, Tom Alweendo has said oil will ‘not be seen tomorrow’, but Namibia is in a position where it could have oil in the next three to four years.

Alweendo made the remarks at a regional consultative meeting held with community members in the Kavango East Region here on Thursday.

Alweendo is expected to conduct the same meeting in the Kavango West Region on Friday.

‘We have two investors that discovered oil and they are TotalEnergies and Shell, co-investing with Qatar Energy and the National Petroleum Corporation,’ he told the gathering.

He said the oil was discovered 250 kilometers offshore Oranjemund, which makes it a Namibian discovery.

The minister said after the discovery was made and officially announced, a number of questions are now being asked by citizens such as what the impact of the oil discovery on the country and on social wellbeing will be.

Others, he said, want to know whether fuel prices will decrease with the discovery of oil.

‘It’s one thing to discover oil and it’s another to see when this oil will be produced. It’s important to say that we will not see oil tomorrow. Typically discovery and production can take up to seven to nine years. Oil is a complicated business especially now that it’s found in deep waters. For example from the top of the water to the bottom of the sea is about three kilometers and then you have another two kilometers to drill from the bottom of the sea to get to where the oil is,’ the minister explained.

That type of work will take time he added, thus oil ‘will not be seen tomorrow.’

Alweendo however, said Namibia might be in a position to possibly have oil sooner than the seven to nine years.

‘We have all heard about the energy transition. Globally, the world is moving towards renewable energy, which is mostly sun and wind. In the next 20 to 30 years there will be less demand for oil, thus investors in this area would want to extract this as quick as possible in order to have enough time to recover their investment. So, chances are that we might get oil in the next three to four years,’ he noted.

This, he said, also gives government enough time to ensure that the country is ready for this kind of impact.

The minister said the economic impact on the country will work in two ways, noting that government will collect revenue from the oil.

The country’s current legal framework is that government will get 5 per cent of the revenue in terms of royalties and will gain from 35 per cent tax.

Namcor has 10 per cent shareholding.

Meanwhile, Alweendo warned Namibians not to accept all hostile rhetoric spread by international civil organisations that are against the ongoing drilling activities in the country.

He said Namibians should rather insist that investors doing mining or exploration should have an environmental management plan and where they may take land, have a fair compensation plan.

Source: The Namibian Press Agency