What was claimed
A video shows crude oil being discovered in Burkina Faso.
Our verdict
This isn’t what the footage shows. It’s actually a sewer being repaired in the United States. The black liquid bubbling up is likely to be sewage.
Viral clip does not show discovery of crude oil in Burkina Faso
12 January 2024
A video supposedly showing the discovery of crude oil in Burkina Faso actually shows construction works to replace a sewer in the United States.
The footage has been circulating widely on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok in recent days.
One TikTok version of the video has been liked more than 160,000 times and viewed over 4.5 million times.
A caption with a post sharing the video on Facebook says: “Crude oil has been discovered in Burkina Faso.”
In the clip, a mechanical digger is pulling earth out of a trench while a black liquid is seen to bubble up from underneath.
However, this substance is not oil, and the video is not filmed in the West African country of Burkina Faso.
The video was originally published on 23 December on the Facebook page of a company based in Minnesota in the US called McClure Plumbing and Heating Inc.
The caption on the video says: “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” clay piping. It went well and we were all backfilled by about 12.30pm!”
During the video, a voice with an American accent says: “She’s coming at you pretty fast”, while dark liquid comes out of the ground.
Sewage turns darker as it ages, with stale sewage becoming dark brown or black.
False claims like these have the potential to cause confusion about energy security and fuel prices. We have previously fact checked a misleading claim by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak about the number of jobs supported by the oil and gas industry in Scotland, and why petrol is more expensive now than 15 years ago.
Image courtesy of Priad123456789
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the video does not show the discovery of crude oil in Burkina Faso, but works to repair a sewer in the United States.