South Africa has made a significant discovery of a deep-water oil and natural gas field. The "Brulpadda" was announced in early February and is estimated to total anywhere between 500 million and 1 billion barrels of oil and oil-equivalent*. Brulpadda is thus poised to be a significant boon to South Africa's energy sector, though its location over 100 miles off the South African coast does pose certain operating issues and risks. Nevertheless, there is great excitement about this find and the energy giant Total, which discovered Brulpadda, has indicated that it will acquire seismic data of the area and begin drilling further exploration wells.
*Early assessments indicate that the Brulpadda find is predominantly natural gas
