(Bloomberg) \u2013 Namibia plans to consolidate control of its petroleum sector under the office of the presidency, as the southern African nation edges toward becoming an oil producer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The move is part of a proposed amendment to the Petroleum Act, Defense and Veterans Affairs Minister Frans Kapofi \u2014 who is also serving as Minister of Industries, Mines and Energy \u2014 said in Parliament late Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The bill seeks to \u201cprovide for the transfer of certain powers\u201d from the energy minister to the president and to the director-general of the upstream petroleum unit in the presidency, Kapofi told lawmakers. Some responsibilities held by the commissioner for petroleum affairs would move to a newly created deputy director-general within the upstream unit.<\/p>\n
The proposed changes come as TotalEnergies SE negotiates with Namibia over the development of an offshore discovery that \u2014 along with a string of finds by Shell Plc and Galp Energia SGPS SA \u2014 have turned the nation into an exploration hot spot.<\/p>\n
Namibian President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah started to bring oil and gas more directly under her control earlier this year.<\/p>\n
The latest proposals are an attempt to elevate the status of the upstream unit and establish its legal basis, said Graham Hopwood, a special adviser to consultancy Horizon Engage. \u201cThey had to clarify that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Image courtesy of African Energy Chamber.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Bloomberg) \u2013 Namibia plans to consolidate control of its petroleum sector under the office of the presidency, as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[2461,2455,2458,2454,102,2456,2459,2448,2450,2449,2457,2453,2452,2460,2451],"class_list":{"0":"post-2727","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-namibia","8":"tag-african-energy-reform","9":"tag-african-oil-production","10":"tag-energy-policy-africa","11":"tag-galp-energia","12":"tag-namibia","13":"tag-namibia-exploration","14":"tag-namibia-oil-governance","15":"tag-namibia-oil-sector","16":"tag-namibia-presidency","17":"tag-namibian-petroleum-act","18":"tag-offshore-oil-discoveries","19":"tag-shell-namibia","20":"tag-totalenergies-namibia","21":"tag-upstream-control","22":"tag-upstream-regulation"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}