Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG)

Rwanda has no domestic production of natural gas. The country relies on imported gas especially LPG from other countries. The LPG market in Rwanda is dominated by 10 importers including Société Pétrolière-SP, Kobil, Sulfo Rwanda, Rwanda Oxygène, Merez, Hashi energy, Abbarci Petroleum, Safe gas Lake Petroleum Rwanda, RUCSA Investment. Retail distribution is done through service stations, independent distributors, and supermarkets in an assortment of cylinder sizes ranging from 3 kg to 50 kg and also the tanks from 500 kg to 5000 kgs are available for big Institutions. 

The use of LPG has started to attract the attention of cooking energy consumers but its penetration has not yet reached a satisfactory level to see its impact on the reduction of biomass use. At household level, the progress is promising looking at the quantity of the imported LPG and sales of the companies involved in this business and increase in the use of LPG in institutions which before was quite inexistent in public institutions with bigger consumption amount of firewood that contribute much to deforestation. A national survey report published on 08/12/2020 by the Centre for Economic and Social Studies in partnership with the European Union on Cooking Fuel Energy and Technologies in Households, Commercial and Public Institutions in Rwanda showed public institutions’ LPG annual consumption as found in the table below:

Table: LPG annual consumption in Kg per institution

According to Rwanda’s NST-1 target, LPG use must increase from 6% in 2020 to approximately 40% of the population in 2024. To make it a reality, the Government has set the Plan that considers three action options:

  • To develop new policies to improve LPG access and direct public institutions to transition to LPG from Biomass use and implement Full Implementing the Branded Cylinder Recirculation Model (BCRM) plan.
  • Mobilize industry and financial sector to expand LPG cylinder inventories and distribution networks.
  • High plus requiring urban residential and institutional users to switch to LPG and prohibiting biomass supply and use for cooking in the urban markets through awareness campaigns.

EPD has 14 active member players in LPG business (10 importers and 4 distributors) who managed to boost their gas sales from 2,749,572 Kg in 2015 to 21,329,751 Kg in 2019.  Currently, on average use, a household using LPG uses 12.74 Kg per month at the cost of RWF14,315.

 Rwanda LPG consumption 2015-2019