Saipem SpA is accelerating its market orientation in Namibia, organizing a high-profile industrial safety workshop in the coastal hub of Swakopmund as the Italian energy services giant positions itself to capitalize on the Southwest African nation’s impending offshore oil boom.

The initiative, launched in collaboration with privately held exploration player Rhino Resources Ltd., marks Saipem’s first major public-facing corporate event since establishing a permanent office in the country at the beginning of the year. Namibia has rapidly emerged as an exploration hotspot following a string of massive deepwater discoveries by international majors in the Orange Basin, drawing heavy infrastructure and oilfield services contractors to its shores.

The workshop convened a diverse group of stakeholders, including local businesses, sub-contractors, and municipal authorities, to lay down strict operational guidelines before large-scale drilling campaigns begin. Saipem’s focus centers heavily on integrating “human performance principles” into local operations—a framework aimed at balancing physical industrial safeguards with the psychological safety required for high-risk offshore environments.

“Maintaining high safety standards will be essential to ensuring Namibia’s sustainable and responsible energy development,” Saipem said in a statement following the event.

The push for a proactive safety culture comes as international contractors face scrutiny over local content integration and capacity building in frontier markets. By sharing its global health and safety frameworks, Milan-based Saipem is attempting to build early goodwill and technical capability among the domestic workforce. Discussions at the event emphasized creating resilient, “fail-safe” operating environments capable of preventing the high-consequence incidents historically associated with fast-tracked oil frontiers.

The partnership with Rhino Resources is highly strategic. Rhino holds prominent exploration acreage in Namibia’s offshore waters. This collaboration underpins a shared corporate objective to align local supply chains with stringent international oilfield standards prior to the onset of major extraction activities.