East African Business Week

KIGALI, RWANDA--Scramble for Rwanda's methane gas is unfolding with Egypt's Orascom Construction Industries (OCI), a unit of Orascom Group planning to spend up to $130million to generate 50 Megawatts(MW) of electricity from the natural gas.
Orascom joins Rwanda Energy Company (REC) and ContourGlobal in the battle for the highly explosive but lucrative gas in Lake Kivu, west of Rwanda. ContourGlobal initially planned to generate 100MW but it will start with 25MW. REC has not reached a stable state of extraction but it was targeting 4Mw.
The three could soon be joined by Israel Africa Energy Ltd, which is still negotiating a delayed takeover of the government's pilot methane plant. The Government seeks to privatise the plant in order to increase its current capacity of 1.8 MW to 50MW.
However, the takeover bid has allegedly been hit by a legal case initiated by Dane Associates, which claims to own 70% of the technology used by plant. Dane Associates is a Canadian company that was once partnering with the Rwandan government to extract the gas.
Rwanda continues to attract investors to the energy sector offering to buy whatever amount of electrical power they would produce for at least over 25 years.
Methane gas is one of the biggest sources of 'clean and reliable' energy that Rwanda is patiently waiting to exploit to get rid of 'dirty and noisy' generators running on heavy fuels. Studies have shown that there is about 60 billion cubic meters of methane in Lake Kivu.
Meanwhile, the amount currently available for extraction is around 40 billion cubic meters, according to Dr. Natacha Tofield Pasche, an expert with Rwanda's Ministry of Infrastructure, which oversees energy matters.
  Ms. Natacha is involved in a project that monitors the Lake's life. State Minister in charge of energy Ms. Coletha Ruhamya says that her country has an 'urgent need' for energy because of the growing economy.
She says the government has set a target of 1,000 MW between 2011 and 2017 and 300MW will be coming from methane gas. Ms. Ruhamya signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Orascom Construction Industries Director for Africa Operations Mr. Mohamed Safeyeldin in Kigali last week to affirm commitment on both sides.
OCI intends to extract the gas, convert it into electricity and sell it to the government.
"We are fully committed to achieve success," said Mr. Safeyeldin, adding that the study that would lead to extraction of the gas is to be finalised in ten months from last week..