Building Public Trust in Oil & Gas

Trust starts the moment we respect the public enough to inform them properly.

That single idea sits underneath everything I want to say about oil and gas in Namibia. This is not a defence of the industry. It is an invitation to understand it — and an honest look at the work my field, communications, has to do to earn the understanding.

Why trust is not a soft issue

In oil and gas, reputation is not decoration. It shapes policy, investment, community support, media narratives and national confidence. It decides whether a good project is welcomed or resisted.

Picture the same discovery under two different conditions.

Without trust, even good projects face resistance. Honest questions curdle into suspicion. And because we leave a silence, the narratives get written for us rather than by us.

With trust, communities grasp the opportunity instead of fearing it. Risks are understood rather than imagined. And the national benefit stops being a slogan and becomes something people feel is genuinely shared.

The distance between those two worlds is not geology or economics. It is communication.

The stigma we inherit

We cannot pretend we start from zero. Extractive industries almost everywhere carry a long shadow, and Namibians have heard the stories: pollution, secrecy, corruption, inequality, and foreign firms that take more than they give.

Naming that perception is the first act of honesty. You do not dissolve a stigma by ignoring it — you dissolve it with facts, openness and visible accountability, offered before anyone has to demand them.

The trust gap

Here is where mistrust actually grows.

The public hears the loud words — discoveries, billions, first oil, opportunity. What rarely reaches them is the quieter, more important half: the timelines, the risk, the true costs, the regulation, the environmental safeguards, and the honest answer to the only question that really matters to a family — how does any of this value come back to the country and to me?

The gap between the hype and the understanding is exactly where mistrust grows.

Close that gap and most of the suspicion has nowhere to live.

The shift we need to make

At NAMCOR we are already communicating discoveries, explaining the upstream opportunity, engaging stakeholders and partners, supporting accurate public information, and positioning the company as Namibia's national participant in the sector.

But there is one shift that changes everything: moving from event-based communication to continuous public education. Speaking only around announcements trains people to expect us when there is something to sell. Showing up all year round — when there is nothing to announce — is what tells them the relationship is real.

The model: Inform. Include. Prove.

Three words carry the whole approach, and they only work in order.

• Inform. Speak in plain language. No jargon, no spin — just clarity.
• Include. Bring communities, media, youth and civil society into the conversation, rather than talking at them.
• Prove. Back every claim with action, transparency and consistency.

They reinforce each other and they are sequential. You cannot prove something to people you never bothered to inform, or include people you never bothered to reach.

What follows are six practical ways to live that out.

1. Simplify the industry

Build public-friendly education that answers the questions people actually ask: What is exploration? What is first oil? What is local content? Who owns the resource? How does NAMCOR participate?

If people do not understand the industry, they will fill the gaps with fear, rumour or politics. Plain-language explainers are not "dumbing it down." They are the entry point to an informed public.

2. Show the safeguards

Communicate the protections before people ask — not after they worry. Environmental monitoring and ESIA processes, operating and safety standards, emergency response readiness, regulatory compliance, and clear reporting lines.

Do not only talk about opportunity. Talk about responsibility. Volunteering the safeguards signals confidence; hiding them signals the opposite.

3. Make the benefits visible

People trust what they can see. National value has to feel local, not abstract — jobs, training and skills transfer, local procurement and supplier development, scholarships, infrastructure, partnerships, and a credible line of sight to future revenue.

Translate the big numbers into something a person can point to: a bursary in their town, a contract for a local supplier, a road, a job.

4. Get out there

Meet people where they are, on a fixed calendar — not at flashpoints. Community open days, a mobile information roadshow that tours towns, schools and markets, and live public panels where NAMCOR, the Ministry, the operator and an independent voice all take questions in the same room.

Recurring, scheduled engagement in host regions — //Kharas, Lüderitz, Walvis Bay — signals confidence. Reactive engagement signals panic. And the least trusted voice in any room is the company talking about itself, so we should be building platforms where others can speak too — including the sceptics. Bringing critics inside the tent earns more trust than avoiding them.

5. Reach people where they listen

Use the channels Namibians actually use, and the voices they already trust. Regional radio and call-in shows still beat any glossy brochure. Speak in local languages — Oshiwambo, Otjiherero, Khoekhoegowab, Afrikaans. Work through traditional and faith leaders who carry real local credibility, and brief journalists properly, because accurate coverage starts there.

The messenger often matters more than the message. The most credible voice is rarely ours — so equip the trusted ones rather than competing with them.

6. Prove it in public

Replace promises with evidence people can check for themselves:

• A "where the value goes" dashboard — local-content spend, jobs and training, updated quarterly.
• Third-party validation — independently audited figures, not self-reported ones.
• "You said, we did" reporting — publicly closing the loop on every concern raised.
• Plain-English ESIA summaries — the safeguards, in language people can actually read.

Tie it together in a Trust Index: track it, report it, manage it. That turns trust from a vibe we hope for into a number we are accountable to.

What we can do better

Honestly, the industry has too often spoken only to itself. Speaking to ordinary Namibians asks four things of us:

• Be faster — move at the speed of the conversation.
• Be simpler — plain language over technical detail.
• Be more visible — show up before we are asked to.
• Be more transparent — open by default, not on request.

And above all: communicate before there is confusion, not after there is controversy.

In closing

Trust is not a press release. Trust is a relationship, built through clarity, consistency and proof.

Our job is not to make people blindly believe in oil and gas. It is to help them understand it, question it responsibly, and see clearly how it can serve Namibia. Public trust is built the moment communication becomes a service to the public — not just a defence of the organisation.