The operations officer of the national electricity utility agency (EWSA) Nathalie Muteteri has affirmed electricity tariffs will decrease as the ongoing extraction of methane gas in Lake Kivu contributes to the current energy in the country.
Officials from Rwanda Energy, Water and Sanitation Authority (EWSA) are in awareness campaign explaining residents around Lake Kivu, issues related to the extraction of methane gas and its extraction.
“By 2017, at least 300 megawatts will have been extracted and other study are being conducted to see how to increase energy in the country so definitely tariffs will have to drop down,” Muteteri said in Karongi.
Muteteri also calmed residents on the fear that methane gas will explode or make Lake Kivu to overturn saying that water surface of the lake overweighs the gas to cause such incidents.
The lake’s seeming lethal combination of methane and carbon dioxide has continuously made residents fear for their lives, however methane gas is also Rwanda’s vital and promising energy source.
Reports have suggested that Lake Kivu is one of the world’s three exploding lakes at serious risk of overturning, a process where huge amounts of carbon dioxide are released from the lake’s under surface, suffocating almost everyone residing around the lake.
Experts have pointed out that there should not be any reason of panic, because the surface area of the lake is far larger than that of methane gas into the water and that extraction work is done by experts and so calling for no panic.
It is not the first time residents residing around Lake Kivu get panic. Early this year, the State Minister for Energy and Water, Eng. Colette Ruhamya had to respond to them dispelling concerns that the extraction of methane gas and other fossil fuels from Lake Kivu would not harm biodiversity in the area.
She said that several feasibility studies were carried out on how the extraction will be carried out without causing any harm and how effectively the waters can be separated from methane gas, which contains other fossil fuels.
Ruhamya added that a Lake Kivu monitoring team was set up to keep a close eye on the activities in the lake.
According to her, methane gas, carbon dioxide, petroleum, fertilizers, electricity and hydrogen sulphide are some of the fossils fuel that were discovered in Lake Kivu “but due to capacity constraints, Rwanda had to prioritized methane gas and electricity.
Lake Kivu is said to be containing 65 billion cubic metres of methane (50 million tonnes of petrol) lying 250 metres under the water.
The available electricity generation capacity in Rwanda in July 2009 is 69MW and is largely produced from hydro power and thermal sources.
Overall power production has stabilized after severe power shortages in 2004 that caused massive load shedding all over the country, prompted the government to hire emergency power solutions and invest in increasing generation capacity.
Generation capacity will be expanded to at least 130MW by 2012 mainly through investment in hydropower and methane gas to power projects.
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