Gisenyi — Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo are planning to exploit up to 200 Megawatts of electric power from methane gas in Lake Kivu.

The huge amount of power would promote rural and urban development, lower the cost of production in factories and increase businesses, thus creating more jobs in the two countries.

Energy ministers from the two countries recently signed the protocol to establish the joint venture, equal exploitation and sharing of the gas.

This came a few days after presidents Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Joseph Kabila of Congo met in Goma, eastern Congo to resurrect the devastated relationship between their countries.

The two countries have, however, gone beyond the protocol and want to include their neighbour, Burundi, in the joint venture.

The Rwandan and Congolese Energy ministers last Sunday presented the offer to their Burundian counterpart in the meeting held in Gisenyi, 156 kilometres from the Kigali. The ministers further discussed how to concretize the joint venture.

They also discussed and agreed on what to present to the development partners gathering in today's meeting in Rwanda looking at the possible financing mechanisms to generate the anticipated electricity.

Rwanda's State Minister for Energy, Dr. Albert Butare told East African Business Week that generation of 200MW could require between $500 and $600 million.

Butare noted that the three states are looking at various financing mechanisms.

One of the mechanisms is to have an entirely public run project; the second is to create a public-private venture; and the third one, which has more chances to happen, is floating the joint venture to the private sector to generate subsidized power and sell it to the governments.

The World Bank (WB) president Robert Zoellick who was in Rwanda last week and visited the country's initiated pilot power plant at the lake backed the joint venture.

The three countries share their power utility company -Société International d'Electricite des Pays des Grands Lacs (SINELAC) - created in 1984 and headquartered in Bukavu, eastern Congo. It currently generates 30MW of power shared equally among the shareholders.

Burundi will, however, pay for the power it will get from the methane gas.

"This resource is not going to be issued to Burundi free of charge but in any case they are going to benefit because this is clean and green energy and by all means and standards, it's going to be cheaper compared to thermal generated electricity," Butare said.

Lake Kivu was formed about 500,000 years and it contains estimated 55 billion cubic meters of methane gas that could generate 700 Megawatts of electrical power in 55 years.

It is shared by Rwanda on the west and DRC on the east.