State-run oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) said on Monday it had signed an agreement to allow the building of a Venezuela-Colombia gas pipeline across the territory of the Wayuu, a group of indigenous Colombians.

The agreement was signed on Sunday night after the PDVSA agreed to compensate the indigenous people for environmental damage to their land.

"The Colombian government is not interested in defending the interests of ancestral communities," Jhon Jairo Iguaran, a Wayuu spokesman, told media on Monday.

The 250-km pipeline, costing 355 million U.S. dollars, will link the western Venezuelan city of Maracaibo to eastern Colombia's Puerto Ballenas.

The pipeline is due to transit 150 million cubic feet a day from Colombia to Venezuela during its first four years of service, after which it could provide Venezuela with an opportunity to export gas.

Construction work began in November 2006 in the Venezuelan state of Zulia, and in December in Colombia.