IN SHORT: BP has agreed to acquire a 60% operating interest in three Walvis Basin exploration blocks in Namibia from Eco Atlantic Oil and Gas, entering the country as an operator for the first time. The cash consideration is $2.7 million upfront with options worth up to $63 million tied to 2028 licence extensions. BP will carry Eco Atlantic’s retained 25% stake through the current exploration phase. The deal is pending Namibian government approval.
BP has moved into Namibia’s Walvis Basin as an operator, agreeing to take a 60% interest in three exploration blocks from Eco Atlantic Oil and Gas in a deal that extends the supermajor’s footprint into one of the Atlantic’s most actively explored frontier basins and positions it alongside TotalEnergies and Shell in what is fast becoming southern Africa’s defining upstream oil story.
The blocks covered are PEL97, PEL99 and PEL100 in the Walvis Basin. BP signed the agreement on April 13, subject to approval from the Namibian government and regulatory authorities.
- The financial terms are structured to favour BP: $2.7 million in upfront cash consideration plus contingent payments of up to $63 million tied to the exercise of licence extension options in 2028. BP will carry Eco Atlantic’s retained 25% working interest through the current exploration phase, covering costs for the planned 3D seismic acquisition programme across more than 3,000 square kilometres. NAMCOR, Namibia’s national oil company, retains its statutory participating interest in all three blocks.
- BP already has a presence in Namibia through a joint venture with Eni on separate acreage, but the Eco Atlantic deal marks BP’s first role as operator in the country, taking on direct responsibility for exploration decisions and work programme execution.
- The Walvis Basin is geologically proximate to the Orange Basin, where TotalEnergies made the Graff and Venus discoveries in 2022 and Shell confirmed significant hydrocarbons at Jonker in 2023. Those Orange Basin finds are estimated to contain several billion barrels of recoverable oil and are widely credited with resetting investor expectations for southern African offshore exploration. The Walvis Basin shares structural characteristics and has attracted significant attention as a result.
- Eco Atlantic retains a 15% working interest in the three blocks after the transaction. The company’s CEO Gil Holzman described the partnership as transformational for Eco Atlantic, which gains BP’s technical expertise and operational capacity to accelerate exploration at a scale the junior explorer could not finance independently.
- Namibia has moved rapidly to capitalise on its upstream moment. TotalEnergies’ Venus project, now in development planning, is one of the largest deepwater oil projects globally in the pre-FID pipeline. The government has streamlined licensing and approval processes to attract further exploration capital, and multiple supermajors are now active or seeking entry.
- The deal also reflects BP’s strategic recalibration under CEO Murray Auchincloss, who reversed the previous leadership’s accelerated energy transition pivot and returned the company to upstream investment as a growth priority. Africa, and Namibia specifically, is central to that recalibration.
Eco Atlantic’s VP of Capital Markets and Investor Relations Guy Sella confirmed the blocks cover a large underexplored area adjacent to proven productive trends and that BP’s entry validates the prospectivity of the acreage.
The Bigger Picture: Namibia has gone from an oil exploration frontier to one of the most competitive deepwater markets in the world in under four years. BP’s entry as an operator is the latest signal that the supermajors view the country’s offshore as a structural growth priority, not a speculative bet. For Namibia, the prize is not just the oil revenue: it is the infrastructure, the jobs, the local content obligations, and the negotiating leverage that comes with having BP, TotalEnergies, Shell and Eni all competing for position in your waters simultaneously. That is a remarkable position for a country of 2.5 million people to be in.
Source: BP press release / The Energy Year
