OIL AND GAS SHOWS NUMEROUS IN NAMA BASIN, SOUTHERN AFRICA

No local sources of oil and gas are on production in southwestern Africa. The as yet undeveloped Kudu gas field off Namibia is the first major discovery, but there are numerous shows in the onshore Nama basin that suggest there could be significant accumulations of hydrocarbons present. The Nama basin occupies 350,000 sq km of southern Namibia, western Botswana, and northwestern South Africa and contains 10 km or more of Neoproterozoic and Cambrian sediment. National petroleum Corp. of Namibia recently embarked on an assessment of the prospectivity of the basin, and there the authors report some of the first results.