False! Namibia did not cancel oil and gas contracts with U.S

By: Alusine Rehme Wilson

 ( A grid image of the Namibian and US Presidents posted alongside the claim).

Claim: In a recent post on Facebook, Vidal Joseph Johnson claimed that Namibia has cancelled its oil and gas contract with the United States and ordered an immediate halt to all American mining operations within its territory.

Verdict: False! Namibia has not cancelled its oil and gas contracts with the United States. No evidence supports the assertion.

Full Text

In this post, Vidal Joseph Johnson, a Facebook user, claimed that Namibia has cancelled its oil and gas contract with the United States and ordered an immediate halt to all American mining operations within its territory. 

This claim went viral on social media including Instagram and X. It was also spotted here, here and attracting the attention of Africans who had recently been slammed with a US visa ban. Many considered the post a form of revenge on their behalf.

All the countries involved in the US visa ban are: Afghanistan, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Laos, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.

As a result, DUBAWA decided to fact-check the claim as part of its commitment to curb misinformation and promote accuracy in the digital space.

Verification

A search on Namibia and the United States' current oil and gas contracts on the internet found no official report from the Namibian president’s office affirming the claim. However, Reuters reported that the Namibian government has since debunked the claim.

Additionally, a Google keyword search revealed that in March 2025, President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah stated that her office would manage the country’s energy sector. This was reported on several local media outlets as spotted here, here, and here.

As stated in her inaugural speech, the Namibian president has since appointed two advisors to oversee the sector in line with her mission to regulate the country's oil and gas but a thorough search on the Namibian president's official website,  showed no evidence that the country has cancelled its oil and gas contract with the US.

When a reverse image search was conducted on the photo attached to the claim on Yandex and Google, DUBAWA found that the image appeared as a meme in one of the search results. The other result showed that Namibia is one of the world’s hottest bases for oil exploration which has recently attracted interests of global oil and gas companies including Chevron, a major US oil company, as well as French owned company TotalEnergies. 

Other results show that this picture of the Namibian president and that of the US president were collaged and have been circulated across multiple social media platforms since March 2025.

Furthermore, our researcher found Chevron, a major US oil company, on the list of prominent oil and gas companies. Chevron has acquired an 80% interest and operatorship of PEL 82 offshore Namibia. 

It was also discovered that Channa Kurukulasuriya, the country manager for Chevron in Namibia, announced the company's vision, key milestone and business expansion in Namibia during the Namibia International Energy Conference (NIEC) in April 2025. 

When this researcher reached out to the trio of the Namibia Oil and Gas ministry, the Namibian Presidency and the US Presidency via email, none  responded to email inquiries sent to them to confirm or debunk the claim.

However, DUBAWA found that Chevron has acquired fresh stakes in Namibia's offshores project from the Namibian oil and gas company, Custos Energy (Pty) Limited of a working interest in the oil exploration II Limited, a subsidiary of Chevron Crop with a potential for Chevron to receive an 80% stake and operator functions in the PEL 82 project, while Custos Energy and the National Petroleum Company of Namibia (NAMCOR) will retain 10% each.

Conclusion 

Vidal Joseph Johnson’s claim that Namibia has cancelled its oil and gas contract with the United States and ordered an immediate halt to all American mining operations within its territory is FALSE. Findings revealed that US-owned Chevron, an oil and gas company, recently secured an 80% stand and operator function in the PEL 82 project in the famous Namibian oil and gas basin.