Clips of unrelated pipelines falsely depicted as part of Ethiopian gas export project
The Ethiopian government recently set aside the plans to kill the natural gas from the Ogaden basin to Djibouti due to financial constraints and project delays. But the publications circulating on Facebook claim to display the current construction of the Ethiopia export pipeline. However, this is false: the video shows a compilation of unrelated clips, including images from India and Australia. The construction of the planned Ogaden-Djibouti pipeline has never started.
An article Amharic published on Facebook and shared more than 480 times is read as follows: “An incredible Ethiopian pipeline which transports gas to the port.”
Screenshot of the false post, taken on July 4, 2025
The message, published on June 27, 2025, includes a 30-second video which shows the construction of various pipelines and refineries while a male voice tells in the background.
“Ethiopia builds a large gas pipeline which will transport the gas from the Ogaden basin for export,” explains the narrator.
The Ogaden basin is found in the Somali region of Ethiopia and contains significant reserves of crude oil and natural gas.
“The gas pipeline is 767 kilometers long and connects the gas directly to the Red Sea for transport,” adds the video narrator. “The construction of the pipeline, which has been interrupted several times in the past, has now resumed full capacity.”
He also claims that the pipeline is built by a Chinese company and will transport more than 12 billion cubic meters of natural gas each year.
Similar publications have also been shared here and here on Facebook.
Ethiopian gas
Ethiopia has actively explored oil and natural gas in partnership with Chinese companies.
The first attempts were tainted with tragedy when, in 2007, more than 65 Ethiopians and Chinese workers were killed by Ethiopian rebels of the National Liberation Front of Ogaden (OnLF) in an oil field in the Ogaden basin (archived here).
In 2018, after the election of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia tested the production of crude oil for the first time from two reserves in the Ogaden basin – the Kalub and Hilala fields in the eastern part of the country (archived here).
The exploration and production of natural gas and crude oil in the Ogaden basin were carried out in partnership with the Chinese company Poly-GCL Petroleum Investment Limited.
In 2019, Ethiopia and Djibouti signed an agreement of several billion dollars to establish a natural gas pipeline 760 kilometers from Kalub and Hilala at the port of Djibouti (archived here).
However, the video does not show this proposed project.
Non -existent pipelines
Keyword research reveals that the construction of the pipeline has never been overlooked.
The verification of AFP’s facts found a speech that Abiy delivered to Parliament in early June 2025 when he declared that the country would begin gas production for domestic use in September (archived here).
His announcement follows the publication of May 2025 of a 41 -page report entitled “Ethiopian Energy Perslow 2025” in which the Ministry of Water and Energy confirmed that the government had canceled the extraction of natural gas provided in the Ogaden region and a pipeline project in Djibouti for export as a liquefied natural gas (archived here).
According to the report, cancellation was the result of financial constraints and delays in the implementation of the project as well as evolution towards domestic consumption.
On June 28, 2025, local media indicated that the decision to end the natural gas pipeline had already been made in 2022 and that recently made public (archived here).
Unpaid videos
AFP Fact Check also used the Insvid-Weverify video verification tool to carry out reverse image searches on the key images of the video.
The research results included a link to an Instagram video showing the Arab project on crude oil oil in India, involving a 489 -kilometer pipeline connecting Mundra to the Gujarat to the Barmer refinery in Rajasthan.
It was published by Megha Engineering and Infrastructures Ltd, the company responsible for the construction of the pipeline (archived here).
Other research has revealed that part of the images was also published by the same company on Youtube in October 2023 (archived here).
AFP FACT Check Screengrabs corresponding to the original Instagram video to clip frames in the false post.
Screenshots of the original video (left) and false post, taken on July 7, 2025
The results of the research also revealed that other parts of the false video were drawn from the images of the “construction project of strong river gas pipeline” published on Youtube in February 2015 (archived here).
The project saw the construction of a 270-kilometer pipeline connecting the Dampier Bunbury gas pipeline to the Salomon center in Transalta in Australia-Western (archived here).
Screenshots of the original video from February 2015 (left) and the false post, taken on July 07, 2025
None of the images presented in the video supports the assertion that they show the construction of an Ethiopian gas pipeline.
