- The Aziza Project holds 20 percent stake currently worth an estimated $100 million in Africa New Energies (ANE)
- ANE holds a petroleum exploration license or concession on Namibia’s eastern border
- World-scale oil and gas deposit in licensed area with potential 1.6 billion barrels of oil equivalent resource estimated at $3.1 billion
- Aziza Project seeks to raise a $60 million oil and gas fund with Aziza Coin, an asset-backed security token
The outlook for oil and gas exploration producers in Africa is an increasingly positive one following a wave of optimism and investor confidence that swept through 2018, as an article published in Africa Oil & Power states (http://ibn.fm/3dclX). The Aziza Project LLC and its asset-backed security token, the Aziza Coin, anticipate the same positive energy for 2019, and the company is focused on investing in early-stage oil and gas exploration businesses operating throughout southern Africa. The Aziza Coin is secured with the company’s first asset – a 20 percent interest currently worth an estimated $100 million in Africa New Energies (“ANE”), Aziza Project CEO Robert Pyke explained in a NetworkNewsAudio interview (http://ibn.fm/K0Qku).
Aziza’s focus on southern Africa is driven by the company’s view of the region as largely untapped and unexplored due to disinvestment during the apartheid era. ANE, an exploration company which holds rights to a 22,000-square-kilometer prospective hydrocarbon concession in Namibia, in 2017 rejected an unsolicited bid for $500 million. This potentially world-scale oil and gas deposit in eastern Namibia, bordering Botswana and the Kalahari Desert, could transform the region’s energy supply and provide a powerful boost to growth in Namibia. By using big data algorithms, the ANE project will be developed at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods.
In its annual Africa Oil & Gas Review, released in November 2018, PwC said that Africa offers plenty of opportunities in the form of unexplored hydrocarbon demand fueled by population growth, urbanization and the emergence of a growing middle class (http://ibn.fm/l45cV). By June 2018, more than $110 billion in global oil and gas projects had been approved since 2017 — a more than 100 percent increase from 2016, when only $50 billion in new spending was announced, according to Rystad Energy, an independent energy consulting services and business intelligence data firm. New drilling for 2019 is also on a positive trend, with 15 high impact wells already planned from the 15-month period from November 2018 through 2019 throughout Africa.
While much of the mainstream oil and gas industry remains focused on the offshore sector, ANE is exploring an onshore concession that potentially holds a 1.6 billion-barrel oil equivalent resource estimated at $3.1 billion. Namibia’s potential for accelerated growth is tied to its abundant mineral resource base, which includes the vast concession that Aziza and ANE have explored for the past five years (http://ibn.fm/oVn8V). ANE is still awaiting the results of a test bore conducted in September to help locate the presence of sub-surface water, along with evidence of any hydrocarbons in the region.
The Aziza Project is in the process of raising $60 million, with $45 million earmarked for a 10-well drilling program at the site that could begin near the end of 2019.
“We are very bullish on the Southern Africa onshore oil and gas prospects. We eagerly await the test bore results and are hoping this will further confirm what ANE’s 17 layers of exploration data is suggesting is underground on the concession. A positive result will unlock Namibian and Southern Africa onshore oil and gas,” Pyke said in a news release (http://ibn.fm/fCYtn).
As institutional investors abandon their skepticism to “embrace their inner crypto,” Aziza sees the path forward as a bright one.
“Institutional investors such as hedge funds, endowments and family offices may be using the backdoor to tap the crypto sector, but the more prevalent such practices become, the greater the pressure will be to become transparent about their crypto holdings, thereby helping to boost the credentials of crypto assets generally. And for those in the security token space, this is particularly encouraging,” Pyke concluded (http://ibn.fm/LxA0S).
For more information, visit the company’s website at www.Aziza.io
