Clips of unrelated pipelines falsely depicted as part of Ethiopian gas export project

The Ethiopian government recently shelved plans to pipe natural gas from the Ogaden Basin to Djibouti because of financial constraints and project delays. But posts circulating on Facebook claim to show the ongoing construction of Ethiopia’s export pipeline. However, this is false: the video shows a compilation of unrelated clips, including footage from India and Australia. Construction on the planned Ogaden-Djibouti pipeline never started.

An Amharic post published on Facebook and shared more than 480 times reads: “Amazing Ethiopian pipeline that transports gas to the port.”

The post, published on June 27, 2025, includes a 30-second video that shows the construction of various pipelines and refineries while a male voice narrates in the background.

“Ethiopia is building a large gas pipeline that will transport gas from the Ogaden Basin for export,” the narrator says.

Ogaden Basin is found in Ethiopia’s Somali region and holds significant reserves of crude oil and natural gas.

“The gas pipeline is 767 kilometres long and connects the gas directly to the Red Sea for transport,” the video's narrator adds. “The construction of the pipeline, which was interrupted several times in the past, has now been resumed at full capacity.”

He further claims that the pipeline is being constructed by a Chinese company and will transport more than 12 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually.

Similar posts were also shared here and here on Facebook.

Ethiopian gas 

Ethiopia has been actively exploring oil and natural gas in partnership with Chinese companies.

Early attempts were marred by tragedy when, in 2007, more than 65 Ethiopians and Chinese workers were killed by Ethiopian rebels from the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) at an oil field in the Ogaden Basin (archived here).

In 2018, following the election of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia trialled 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 both natural gas and crude oil in the Ogaden Basin have been carried out in partnership with the Chinese company Poly-GCL Petroleum Investment Limited.

In 2019, Ethiopia and Djibouti signed a multi-billion dollar agreement to lay down a 760-kilometre-long natural gas pipeline from Kalub and Hilala to Djibouti Port (archived here).

However, the video does not show this proposed project.

Nonexistent pipelines 

Keyword searches reveal that the pipeline’s construction never got off the ground.

AFP Fact Check found a speech Abiy gave to parliament in early June 2025 when he said the country would begin gas production for domestic use in September (archived here).

His announcement followed the May 2025 release of a 41-page report titled “Ethiopian Energy Outlook 2025” in which the Ministry of Water and Energy confirmed that the government has cancelled the planned natural gas extraction in the Ogaden region and a pipeline project to Djibouti for export as liquefied natural gas (archived here).

According to the report, the cancellation was a result of financial constraints and delays in project implementation as well as a shift toward domestic consumption.

On June 28, 2025, local media reported that the decision to terminate the natural gas pipeline project was already taken in 2022 and only recently made public (archived here).

Unrelated videos 

AFP Fact Check also used the video verification tool InVID-WeVerify to conduct reverse image searches on keyframes from the video.

The search results included a link to an Instagram video showing the Arab Crude Oil Pipeline Project in India, involving a 489-kilometre pipeline connecting Mundra in Gujarat to the Barmer refinery in Rajasthan.

It was posted by Megha Engineering and Infrastructures Ltd, the company responsible for constructing the pipeline (archived here).

Further searches revealed part of the footage was also published by the same company on YouTube in October 2023 (archived here).

AFP Fact Check matched screengrabs from the original Instagram video to frames from the clip in the false post.

The search results further revealed that other parts of the false video were taken from footage of the “Fortescue River Gas Pipeline Construction Project” published on YouTube in February 2015 (archived here).

The project saw the construction of a 270 kilometre pipeline connecting the Dampier Bunbury Natural Gas Pipeline to TransAlta’s Solomon Power Station in Western Australia (archived here).

None of the images featured in the video support the claim that they show the construction of an Ethiopian gas pipeline.