The one’s demise is the other’s prize. The recent announcement that Chariot Oil & Gas was unsuccessful in its hunt for oil at Tapir South off Namibia’s northern coast and that Block 1811 did not produce the expected results as the drilling of its test oil-well came up dry, has led to an unexpected windfall for the southern fishing town of Lüderitz.

The entire land support operations for servicing Tapir South that were based in Opuwo will now be shifted to Lüderitz in the weeks to come. The second oil well is to be sunk off the coast of Lüderitz in the southern exploration block 2714A in the Nimrod prospect in which Chariot Oil & Gas has a 25 % stake.
This test well is the second of five test wells in Chariot Oil & Gas’ well programme over the next few years, which will either confirm whether Namibia will join the ranks of oil-producing nations or whether we will have to shelve our visions of black gold and along with that the promise of what the discovery of oil could do to save the country from its persistent socio-economic challenges.
“We are packing up and moving our base to Opuwo”, Cliff Strydom, one of the directors of coastal air services provider, Bay Air Aviation, told Informanté. Bay Air was contracted to Chariot Oil & Gas to facilitate crew changes for the drill platform, Maersk ‘Discoverer’ that sunk the first well at Tapir South. For that purpose an air station was established at Opuwo. International rig crews that arrived in Namibia via the Chief Hosea Kutako International Airport were flown to Opuwo and transferred from the air station to the rig some 165 nautical miles offshore west of the town. Similarly the air station also conducted search-and-rescue stand-by. Other support services, which provided Opuwo a welcome economic boost, have already started to relocate to Lüderitz.
Strydom said the move south must be completed by the end of June. In contrast to Tapir South, the Nimrod well will not be sunk by a drill platform, but by the drill ship, ‘Poseidon’. The ship is expected on location in Nimrod in July and drilling operations are expected to take two months. International newswires indicate that Chariot Oil & Gas stocks punged by 50% after it surfaced that Tapir South came up dry, but the company is upbeat about the prospects of the Kabeljou well, as opposed to Tapir South, which the company said from the outset only promised a 25% success rate. Once the test-drill Kabeljou is concluded an extensive analysis of both this oil well and Tapir South will be conducted. The sinking of the third of the five wells is planned for 2013. The third well is believed to be off the coast of Walvis Bay, raising the prospect among local business people that the harbour town will benefit from spin-off activities related to the supply of the offshore drill operations.