BW Energy Limited is pushing ahead with an ambitious plan to triple its oil production to 90,000 barrels per day within three years, driven by a mix of organic growth, exploration success, and strategic acquisitions across Africa and South America.
Speaking in New York, SVP Finance and Accounting Ali Athar said the company — listed in Oslo and now trading on the U.S. OTC market — aims to build greater visibility among American investors while expanding its footprint in key regions such as Namibia, Gabon, Brazil, and Angola. “This is just our first step into the market,” Athar said. “We want to share our growth story and ensure transparency as we scale up responsibly.”
At the center of that growth story lies Namibia’s Kudu Basin, where BW Energy is currently drilling the Kharas-1 well, located northwest of the legacy Kudu gas field. Industry sources suggest that Kharas-1 could target an updip equivalent of the Mopane reservoir sand and potentially a deeper extension of the Kudu structure itself — a level that could contain not just gas, but possibly oil.
The Kudu gas field, discovered serendipitously in 1974 by Chevron, has long been a challenging resource to commercialize. Containing an estimated 1.3 trillion cubic feet of very dry gas, the field’s hydrocarbons exhibit high concentrations of diamondoids — thermally stable molecules that suggest the gas originated from cracked oil at deeper levels. If BW Energy’s current campaign confirms this theory, it could open the door to a new oil-bearing horizon beneath Kudu’s known gas layers.
Former Tullow Oil petroleum systems expert Gion Kuper, who has studied Kudu extensively, believes such a deeper accumulation is possible. “The current reservoir temperature is too low for the level of thermal cracking observed,” he notes. “That implies migration from deeper, potentially oil-bearing strata.”
While the reservoir’s quality at such depths remains a risk — with cementation potentially limiting porosity — BW Energy’s drilling at Kharas-1 represents a strategic bet: that Namibia’s offshore frontier still holds untapped potential.
If successful, the Kharas-1 campaign could reinforce BW Energy’s drive toward tripling production to 90,000 bpd and cement its reputation as one of the most dynamic mid-tier explorers on the African Atlantic Margin.
