The HoPR, the lower house of the Ethiopian parliament, "approved the agreement as it meets international requirements and allow the country to generate foreign currency from gas export," state-affiliated Fana Broadcasting Corporate (FBC) reported on Wednesday.
Landlocked Ethiopia, which announced the discovery of up to 7 to 8 billion cubic trillion feet (TFC) of natural gas in Ethiopia's Somali regional state by the Chinese firm Poly-GCL Petroleum Group Holdings Limited (Poly-GCL), had signed the agreement with Djibouti early this year to build the pipeline which enables it to transport natural gas from Ogaden area to an export terminal in the Red Sea nation of Djibouti.
Endorsing the bilateral agreement signed by the two neighboring countries, the Ethiopian House of Peoples' Representative also emphasized that the latest agreement would "further cement the previously concluded deals" between the two countries, according to the report.
In February this year, the Ethiopia Ministry of Mines and Petroleum had disclosed that the Poly-GCL, which discovered the natural gas reserve in Ethiopia's Ogaden area, would construct the 767-km natural gas pipeline.
The ministry also stressed that the move would bring much-needed foreign currency to both countries, once the natural gas pipeline project is constructed and commissioned.
Poly-GCL is expected to install a pipeline to transport the gas from fields in landlocked Ethiopia up to ports in neighboring Djibouti in a period of two years. Around 700-km of the natural gas pipeline will be located in Ethiopia, while the rest of the natural gas pipeline will be located in Djibouti, according to the ministry.
The East African country, following the discovery of the hug natural gas, had also announced its plans to generate 1 billion U.S. dollars annually from extraction of natural gas and crude oil deposits.
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