Gov’t to review methane gas contract

The government is set to review the contract on the extraction of methane gas on Lake Kivu. The contract worth $325 million was signed in 2009 between ContourGlobal Kivuwatt Ltd and the government, but the project has since failed to take off. Coletha Uwineza Ruhamya, the Minister of State in charge of Energy and Water, said the contract review was a result of the delays. “The agreement is under review – because there have been delays for the project implementation so it is now time to attract other investors who can deliver and give us power,” the minister explained. Kivuwatt is a subsidiary of US-based gas extraction corporation, ContourGlobal. The integrated gas extraction and electricity generation facility on Lake Kivu, the first of its kind, was to provide 100 MW of natural gas-fired electricity to the national grid.Had everything gone according to plan, the project would have been the first large scale facility to extract methane from the depths of Lake Kivu, the lake located on the border of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It was also hoped that extracting the gas could also mitigate the environmental hazards associated with a natural release of the lake gasses and provide an environmentally friendly and sustainable source of energy. Efforts to contact ContourGlobal were futile by press time. Ends

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Gov’t to review methane gas contract