Africa’s oil and gas sector could be on the brink of a new exploration renaissance, driven by advances in seismic imaging, frontier data sets and faster permitting, industry leaders said at Africa Energy Week (AEW): Invest in African Energies 2025 in Cape Town on Wednesday.

According to Emmanuelle Garinet, VP of Exploration Africa at TotalEnergies, Africa’s frontier basins hold significant volumes. She pointed to Namibia as an example of how seismic and subsurface data can de-risk projects: “When we decided to drill the Venus well, it was frontier, but we had a probability of success of more than 50% because of the seismic data and direct hydrocarbon indicators.”

In the Republic of Congo, TotalEnergies’ exploration permitting process is moving at a markedly faster pace. “We got our permit in less than six months and are preparing for drilling by the end of the year,” Garinet said. By contrast, South Africa’s permitting system has faced delays due to legal challenges, a problem she described as “unacceptable” given limited budgets for global exploration.

General Manager of Global New Ventures at Chevron, Gavin Lewis, emphasized the critical role of comprehensive subsurface datasets in Africa. “Before you can do any AI-driven workflows, you need a dataset that illuminates what the subsurface looks like,” he said. “What Africa has lost is the ability to sponsor multi-client subsurface datasets. The only basin that allows for large, regional high-quality datasets is the Gulf of America, which has allowed that basin to reinvent itself multiple times.”

VP of Exploration for bp, Bryan Ritchie, highlighted survey work in Egypt’s Nile Delta, where the company completed the first deepwater ocean-bottom node seismic survey over the Atoll field and noted that the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company plans to expand multi-client data coverage across a larger area of the delta. ‘We’re seeing new opportunities for these images,” he said.

Beyond exploration, Woodside Energy’s VP of Exploration, Terry Gebhardt, said geoscience and subsurface data are also key to carbon capture and storage projects, as well as “maximizing efficacy and recovery” in existing fields.

The panel discussion, sponsored by EnerGeo Alliance, also underlined the broader scale of investment in Africa’s oil and gas sector. Nikki Martin, President and CEO of EnerGeo Alliance, said African oil and gas capital expenditure is expected to rise to $54 billion by 2030, following a $6 billion surge in exploration spending in 2024.