Clip shows sewage leak in the US, not oil in Burkina Faso

“Crude oil has been discovered in Burkina Faso. What are your thoughts on this?” reads a post published on X by a user called “African Hub” on January 10, 2024.

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A screenshot of the false post taken on January 23, 2024

The account, with more than 228,000 followers, shares posts promoting African-related content.

First debunked by AFP Fact Check in French, similar posts in English are garnering millions of views on X and TikTok.

They include a 37-second clip showing a thick black liquid bubbling out of the ground as an excavator digs in the background.

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Screenshot of a false TikTok post, taken on January 23, 2024

“Excellent. Hopefully, it will bring some wealth into that mostly impoverished country,” reads one comment on X.

“Next stop of USA and NATO… Oil is bad luck for the people of Burkina Faso,” says another.

One of the world’s poorest countries, Burkina Faso has been battling a deadly insurgency since 2015 (archived here). 

NATO, a US-led military alliance, has been working with the African Union since 2005 by providing training and logistical support (archived here). 

Burkina Faso was one of the African Union’s 55 member states until it was suspended following the country’s 2022 military coup (archived here). 

However, the claim that this video shows the discovery of oil deposits in the West African country is false. 

US sewer pipe 

Using a keyword search for “Burkina Faso oil discovery,” AFP Fact Check found a post on X by Sam Douk, a journalist at the British fact-checking organisation LogicallyFacts.

He explains how he found the video initially published in December 2023 on the Facebook page of US-based plumbing and heating business McClure (archived here and here). 

“We wish that was oil! We replaced this sewer this past week that was packed full of tree roots and had 4 patches in the 6-inch clay piping. It went well and we were all backfilled by about 12:30 PM!,” reads the company’s caption.

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A screenshot of the original post, taken on January 23, 2024

In the original footage, a man with an American accent can be heard saying, “Yeah, she’s coming at you pretty fast,” referring to the black substance. 

AFP Fact Check contacted McClure to confirm that the liquid seen in the video was not oil.

 “It's not oil, it's a sewage line,” the company said.

It confirmed that it had repaired the sewage line in the northern-central state of Minnesota.

Visual clues

Energy experts also said that visual clues indicated the liquid in the video was not oil.

“Oil is not found a couple of metres below the surface. You need to dig several kilometres underground,” said Francis Perrin, the research director at IRIS, a French think-tank for international and strategic affairs.

Philippe Sebille-Lopez, a geopolitical expert in energy issues, also explained why oil flooding up from the ground would be unusable. 

“In order for oil preserved in rock for billions of years to be exploitable, it has to be hermetically sealed inside the rock. If there’s a leak, that means oxygen has got in, and the oil couldn’t be exploited anyway,” he told AFP Fact Check. 

No oil in Burkina Faso

Several countries in western Africa are oil producers, including Burkina Faso’s neighbours Niger and Chad. 

“In Niger… you have quite a few small pockets of very medium size or even small-sized pockets for conventional oil exploitation,” Perrin said.

But “oil has not yet been found in Burkina Faso”.

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Map of Burkina Faso and neighbouring countries (AFP)

“We cannot say with certainty that there is no oil in this country, but to date, we haven’t found it, and it [Burkina Faso] is not producing oil,” he added. 

In September 2023, Iran announced it would support the installation of an oil refinery in Burkina Faso and supply it with Iranian oil (archived here). 

“The stakeholders have agreed to supply the proposed installation with Iranian crude oil, as Burkina is not a hydrocarbon-producing country,” Iran’s oil minister said.

Foreign investment

Several users expressed excitement about Burkina Faso’s alleged newfound riches.

“We are about to witness one of the greatest, quickest surges in GDP in modern history,” reads one comment. 

Perrin, however, said that even if a country has oil deposits, it does not mean “that the country is rich”. 

“If oil is found, the company must drill to estimate the size and reserves of the deposit, and it takes years before the exploitation,” he explained. 

“Everything depends on how the resources are exploited and how the revenue is redistributed to the population.”

Oil deposits have attracted foreign involvement in western Africa, notably from Chinese companies  (archived here).

However, foreign investment has sparked a myriad of concerns in Africa, including environmental issues and fears that revenue will go to investors instead of being put into local communities (archived here and here).

New gold refinery

Burkina Faso is battling a jihadist insurgency that spilt over from neighbouring Mali in 2015 and experienced two coups in 2022 (archived here).

In November 2023, Burkina Faso’s junta-led government launched the construction of the country’s first refinery for gold, the nation’s main mineral resource (archived here).

“There’s no longer any question of us taking our gold abroad for refining. We’ll refine it on-site because we know the real content of the raw gold that comes out. That’s very important,” said military leader Captain Ibrahim Traore at a launch ceremony in the capital, Ouagadougou.

The new government regularly accuses foreign powers of monopolising the country’s resources and holds them responsible for Burkina Faso’s insecurity and low standard of living.