Part of Ethiopian gas export project, incorrectly depicted fragments of unrelated pipelines
The Ethiopian government recently put aside plans to bring natural gas from the Ogaden Basin to Djibouti due to financial restrictions and project delays. However, posts circulating on Facebook claim to show the ongoing construction of the Ethiopian export pipeline. However, this is wrong: the video shows a compilation of unrelated clips, including videos from India and Australia. Construction on the planned Ogaden-Djibouti pipeline never began.
Amharic’s post was posted on Facebook and shared over 480 times, saying “Amazing Ethiopian pipeline delivering gasoline to the port.”
Screenshot of fake posts, taken on July 4, 2025
The post, published on June 27, 2025, includes a 30-second video showing the construction of various pipelines and refineries while male voices tell the story in the backstage.
“Ethiopia is building a large natural gas pipeline that will transport natural gas from the Ogaden Basin for export,” the narrator said.
The Ogaden Basin was found in the Somalia region of Ethiopia and has a large amount of crude oil and gas reserves.
The narrator of the video added: “The trachea is 767 kilometers long, connecting the gas directly to the Red Sea for transportation.” “The construction of pipelines that have been interrupted in the past few times has now been fully restored.”
He further claimed that the pipeline was built by a Chinese company and would transport more than 12 billion cubic meters of natural gas each year.
Similar posts are also shared on Facebook.
Ethiopian gas
Ethiopia has been working with Chinese companies to actively explore oil and gas.
In 2007, early attempts were tragically damaged when the Ethiopian rebels (ONLF) were killed by Ethiopian insurgents (archived here) in the Ogaden National Liberation Front (archived here) in the Ogaden Basin oil field (archived here).
In 2018, Ethiopia tried crude oil production from two reserves in the Ogaden Basin for the first time – 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 was conducted in cooperation with the Chinese company Poly-GCL Petroleum Investment Co., Ltd.
In 2019, Ethiopia and Djibouti signed a multi-billion dollar agreement to drop a 760-km gas pipeline from Kalub and Hilala to Djibouti Port (archived here).
However, the video does not show the proposed project.
A non-existent pipeline
Keyword searches show that the construction of the pipe will never break off the ground.
AFP fact-check found that Abiy said in early June 2025 that the country would start using natural gas production in September (archived here).
His announcement comes after a 41-page report, Ethiopia Energy Outlook 2025, released in May 2025, in which the Ministry of Water and Energy confirmed that the government has canceled the planned gas extraction in the Ogaden area and canceled the pipeline project exported to Djibouti as liquefied natural gas (archived here).
According to the report, cancellation is the result of financial restrictions and delays in project implementation and the shift to domestic consumption.
On June 28, 2025, local media reported that the decision to terminate the gas pipeline project had been conducted in 2022 and was not published until recently (archived here).
Non-related videos
AFP fact check also uses video verification tool Invid-weverify to perform reverse image search on key frames in video.
Search results include Instagram video links to India’s Arabian crude oil pipeline project involving connecting Gujarat Mundra to the 489 km pipeline at the Barmer refinery in Rajasthan.
It is published by Megha Engineering and Infrastructures Ltd, the company responsible for building the pipeline (archived here).
The company’s further search showed a portion of the footage, which the company also released on YouTube in October 2023 (archived here).
AFP fact checks matching screenshots of the original Instagram video to frames clipped in False posts.
Screenshots of the original video (left) and fake posts, taken on July 7, 2025
The search results further suggest that other parts of the fake video were taken from videos of the “Fortescue River Pipeline Construction Project” published on YouTube in February 2015.
The project saw a 270-km pipeline connecting the Dampier Bunbury natural gas pipeline to the Solomon Power Station in Transalta, Western Australia (archived here).
Screenshot of original video of February 2015 (left) and fake posts, taken on July 7, 2025
There are no images in the video supporting their claim that they show the construction of Ethiopian gas pipelines.
