The eleven companies are working in petroleum exploration and prospecting with the 19 agreements in Ogaden, Mekele, Abay basin, Afar, Metama, Humera, Southern Rift valley and Gambela area, according to newbusinessethiopia.com.

Exploration in Ethiopia now covers more than 75 percent of the country. Even though these oil exploration companies including the Malaysian giant Petronas, continue the search moving from one part of the country to another, Ethiopia still belongs to the non-oil producing country category.

Following the global oil price decline at the time, Hunt Oil was forced to disrupt the contract, according to latest data newbusinessethiopia.com obtained from the Ethiopian Ministry of Mines and Energy (EMME).

Including petroleum exploration, currently 123 exploration licenses and 51 mining licenses have been issued by EMME to investors. Out of the total 174 licenses, 90 are given to foreign companies while the rest belong to joint venture companies formed by local and foreign investors.

The information obtained from the Ministry indicates that energy resource potential of the country includes 113 billion tons of natural gas and 253 million tons of oil shale.

It has also a total hydropower potential of 45,000 megawatt, 5,000 megawatt geothermal, 300 million tons of coal, 15-20 million tons of agricultural waste, 1,120 million tons of wood and 100 GW of wind power potential. According to the EMME, the country’s climate is also suitable climate for generating solar energy.

From the 1960’s to the early 1980’s large companies explored in East Africa but without the benefit of today's technology or the more recent knowledge gained in West Africa.

Shell, Amoco, AGIP and BP were all active in East Africa during that period. Between them they made reasonably large discoveries of gas, but no oil.

Given that there was no real market for gas at that time in East Africa and that there was a plentiful supply of, often flared, gas in other parts of the world, the search for oil continued elsewhere and the gas discoveries on the East African margin became stranded and were passed by. The whole region was written off as "gas-prone".

East Africa has, until recently, been largely ignored, just as Northwest Africa was in the mid 1990’s, even though the East African coastal margin bears striking similarities to the prolific geology of the western side of the continent.

Many parallels can be drawn between the beginning of renaissance in Mauritania, Morocco, Senegal, Gambia and Guinea in the late 1990’s and the recent upswing in interest in East Africa today.