By Neil Hodgson, Karyna Rodriguez, Lauren Found, Searcher

In the Orange Basin of Namibia and South Africa, a hole appears on the gently dipping clastic slope. In time, it slowly creeps down the slope as if moving under gravity and leaving a filled-hole trail behind it. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote that “the world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes”. Such is this hole – a hole with seemingly no purpose. Yet, it has a meaning.

When Searcher acquired the first multi-client 3D in the Orange Basin of Namibia in 2021 over the southern part of PEL 85, Rhino operated acreage inboard from Shells Graff-1 discovery, we had the thrill of seeing Upper Cretaceous channels onlapping onto the Outer High – which has since become known as the Inner Basin Mopane play – and as the AVO type-III anomalies jumped out of the section, they arrived with some surprises too. The data shown in the foldout is an east-west line from that PEL 85 3D called “Bridge”, displayed in depth, and whilst it excitingly shows the Upper Cretaceous onlapping onto the Aptian (Kudu Fm) source – just check out the sea bed for a moment.