‘Lengthy’ farm-out for African oil & gas assets edging closer to finish line

March 16th, 2026

Tower Resources, the AIM-listed oil and gas company focused on Africa, is making inroads in closing its farm-out deals for assets off the coasts of Namibia and Cameroon.

Illustration; Source: Tower Resources

Tower Resources has shed light on the approval process for the farm-out transactions with Prime Global Energies in Cameroon and Namibia, originally announced in January 2025, explaining that it visited both the Societe Nationale de Hydrocarbures (SNH) and the Prime Minister over the past two weeks in Cameroon, together with its partner.

The firm has been informed by SNH that it will recommend to the Minister of Mines, Industry and Technological Development (MINMIDT) to issue the requested extension of the first exploration period of its Thali license for a further year to March 2027, and to approve the proposed farm-out of a 42.5% interest in this license to Prime, following requests from the Prime Minister’s office and a further site visit, which took place last week.

Jeremy Asher, Tower Resources Chairman & CEO, commented: “We are very pleased to be approaching the end of the process to receive our farm-out approvals, lengthy as it has been. We had wanted to have these concluded before the repayment date of the bridge loan, and it is possible that the documentation of one or both approvals may indeed be in hand by then, but we did not want to allow the potential repayment date to loom too close.”

The company, which is still waiting for written confirmation of this, confirms that the Prime Minister’s office has separately informed about convening a meeting together with MINMIDT and SNH to bring the matter to a conclusion. As a result, the Africa-focused player expects the requisite documentation to follow soon after that meeting.

Tower also met with the newly-formed Upstream Petroleum Unit, which reports directly to the President of Namibia, together with representatives from the Ministry of Industries, Mines and Energy. After the meeting, the company has been informed that its request for approval of the farm-out of a 25% interest in PEL96 to Prime will now be expedited.

The country’s national oil company (NOC), NAMCOR, has finished the due diligence on Prime and is only waiting for some further documentation to complete its file. The first renewal period for PEL96 has already been secured; thus, Tower is confident that these approvals will now be documented reasonably quickly, though it remains cautious about predicting a precise date.

Asher continued: “We are still looking forward to drilling the NJOM-3 well in Cameroon as soon as possible this year, ideally in Q3, but, as usual, this will depend on rig schedules. We will update investors both when the formal documentation has been received and also when we have finalised the rig schedule together with our partners and SNH.

“We are also working with Prime on an application for a further block in Cameroon during the current license round, and we are continuing to work on further data acquisition on PEL96.”