88E’s neighbour Recon Africa hits oil in Namibia
Late last week Canadian listed Recon Africa announced "indications of oil” had been observed from its latest exploration well, onshore in Namibia.
At the same time Recon said that the company had “encountered over 50m of net reservoir” and that the company would be moving to its next well which will be spud in July.
Off the back of the news, Recon’s share price temporarily spiked by ~30%.
Right now Recon is capped at $290M.
We think the news from Recon is good news for our Investment 88 Energy (ASX: 88E).
88E is currently capped at $57M and is earning in a 45% interest in a giant onshore block in the same part of Namibia as Recon.
Until today, most of the big exploration wins in Namibia have been offshore.
Oil supermajors Shell and Total Energies made some of the biggest discoveries in recent decades offshore - one discovery in 2022 estimated to be for ~11 billion barrels of oil.
So far all of the attention has been on offshore ground in Namibia, onshore assets have been fairly untouched.
88E alongside Recon are almost first movers onshore and we think good news from Recon is good news for 88E.

88E recently finished 2D seismic on its project and has mapped ~10 independent structures with some of them individually covering ~100km^2 of ground.

At the moment 88E’s project doesn't have a prospective resource yet - that is expected inside the next two quarters ahead of a drill program planned for 2026.

Objective #4: Firm up drill target at the Namibian asset
Milestones
✅ 2D seismic program starts
✅ 2D seismic program completed
🔄 2D seismic results & interpretation
🔄 Maiden prospective resource estimate
🔲 Primary drill target selected
Source: “What we want to see 88E deliver” section - 88E Investment Memo 20 May 2024
Why we like 88E’s Namibian asset:
- Huge ground position - ~70x the size of 88E’s Project Phoenix in the North Slope of Alaska, USA. The project is large enough to host a large resource base.
- Namibia’s fast developing oil and gas industry - recent giant discoveries offshore by TotalEnergies and Shell have put Namibia on the map. Namibia being touted as the next Guyana where US supermajors Exxon and Hess are making discovery after discovery.
- Namibian onshore peer re-rated by over 40x - ReconAfrica drilled its first well at its onshore Namibian project back in 2021. Between 2020 and 2021 Recon’s share price went from CAD$0.30 to CAD$12.50+.
- Project vendors linked to Invictus Energy (ASX: IVZ) - IVZ director Robin Sutherland is a part of the team doing the deal with 88E. Robin was also involved in EnergyAfrica, which sold to Tullow Oil for $500M in 2004 and then again with Tullow Oil as it went onto make discoveries across East Africa.
- Early stage with plenty of upside - 88E is getting in on the project at a very early stage. There is scope for 88E to run the seismic surveys, define a large prospective resource and firm up a drill program over the next 12-24 months.
- Strategically located - Sits next to one of Africa’s largest economies, South Africa, which is looking to replace its retiring coal-fired energy generation fleet.
What is 88E doing with its US assets?
🔄 Project Leonis - drill planning and farm out progress
88E wants to be drilling project Leonis in Q1 of 2026.
Last week 88E confirmed that “planning and permitting for the tiri-1 exploration well” would start and that “Llamas and Bannister Energy Advisors” would work on finding a farm-out partner for the project.
We put out a detailed Quick take on 88E’s resource upgrade from last week here: 88E adds to prospective resource at US project

🔄 Project Phoenix - appraisal well planning
We noticed in 88E’s most recent quarterly that the company had started planning and design work for an appraisal well at its Phoenix asset.
This is where 88E would be following up the drilling and flow testing work that happened at Hickory-1 in 2023/2024.
