Export-Import Bank of China and the French Development Agency pledged to lend Kenya $163 million this year to buy five drilling rigs to tap steam reserves in Kenya, Africa’s biggest geothermal power producer.

Exim Bank will provide $90 million for three of the facilities and the government-owned Agence Francaise de Developpement the remainder, said Silas Simiyu, chief executive officer of Kenya’s state-run Geothermal Development Co. The gear will probably be delivered in 2013, he told reporters yesterday in Baringo, about 200 kilometers (124 miles) northwest of Nairobi, the capital.

Kenya, East Africa’s biggest economy, is scaling up its search for underground steam deposits with a $2.6 billion, 10- year plan to sink 566 wells at Olkaria, Menengai and Silali in the Great Rift Valley, where shifting tectonic plates provide a key source of the energy.

The goal is to find enough steam to generate 2,336 megawatts of power by 2020 in a bid to ease dependency on the country’s main hydroelectric providers, Simiyu said. Kenya rationed power to homes and businesses between August and October 2009 after a drought depleted dam levels, weighing on economic growth.

“Once the ramping up of geothermal development takes place, the issue of power-generation shortages” will no longer exist, Simiyu said.

Kenya currently has 212 megawatts of installed capacity at geothermal power plants in Olkaria, 120 kilometers northwest of Nairobi.

Increased Output

Kenya Electricity Generation Co., the county’s main power producer, operates two sites with the ability to generate a combined 160 megawatts and it is scheduled to add another 280 megawatts there by 2013. Israel’s Ormat Industries Ltd. operates one 48-megawatt plant, while Oserian, Kenya’s biggest grower of freshly cut flowers, has a 4-megawatt facility used to warm greenhouses.

In November, the Kenyan government acquired two drilling rigs at a cost of $35 million each from China National Petroleum Corp. With them, GDC is expected to begin drilling this week at the central Menengai field, aiming to find sufficient reserves to feed a 400-megawatt power plant by 2014, Simiyu said.

Rigs

Kenya currently has three drilling rigs leased from Great Wall Drilling Co. of China, which are deployed in Olkaria. The country aims to own a total of 12 rigs within the next few years for geothermal exploration, Simiyu said.

Kenya estimates the extent of its unexploited power resources ranges from 7,000 megawatts to 10,000 megawatts at 14 “high-potential” locations valued at $30 billion, according to a company statement handed to reporters.

The U.S., Philippines and Mexico have the world’s largest installed capacities of geothermal power, while Kenya ranks eleventh, according to the website of the International Geothermal Association, citing 2005 statistics. Kenya has since advanced to ninth place, Simiyu said.

According to The Bloomberg Agency