The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) disclosed this in its Oil Market Report for September 2022 releases on Tuesday September 13 in Lagos.

The report revealed that Nigeria’s crude oil production for August averaged 1.100 million barrels per day which was 65,000mb/d lower than the 1.164mb/d produced averagely in July.

While Angola was Africa’s highest crude oil producer for the month under review with an average production of 1.187mb/d.

Libya’s crude oil production averaged also 1.123mb/d for the period.

The report said: “According to secondary sources, total OPEC-13 crude oil production averaged 29.65 mb/d in August, higher by 618,000 month-on-month.Crude oil output increased mainly in Libya and Saudi Arabia, while production in Nigeria declined”

Nigeria’s real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rose by 3.5 percent year-on-year this year following growth of 3.1 percent in the first quarter of 2022.

“On a quarterly basis, the GDP shrank by 0.37 percent following a 14.66 percent contraction in the previous quarter.Nevertheless, the annual inflation rate surged to the highest since September 2005, climbing to 19.6 percent y-o-y in July from 18.6 percent in June.This was a result of the weakening naira due to continued high imported input costs as well as soaring fuel prices. Moreover, food inflation increased to 22 per cent y-o-y, the highest since May 2021,”  the report added.

Nigeria, South Africa, Botswana, Angola, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe are countries placed on the list in late November after the emergence of the Omicron variant.

However, UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid said the Omicron variant had spread so widely that the rules no longer make much effect.

He told parliament today, Dec. 14: “Now that there is community transmission of Omicron in the UK and Omicron has spread so widely across the world, the travel red list is now less effective in slowing the incursion of Omicron from abroad. Whilst we will maintain our temporary testing measures for international travel we will be removing all 11 countries from the travel red list effective from 4 am tomorrow morning.”

Currently, all UK arrivals from red list countries must pay for and self-isolate in a pre-booked, government-approved hotel for 10 days. They must also take Covid tests within 48 hours of setting off for the UK and PCR tests within two days of their arrival.

Nigeria, Algeria, Angola, Ivory Coast, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia were identified as African nations with direct links or a high volume of travel to China.

The statement read “WHO has identified 13 top priority countries (Algeria, Angola, Cote d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia) which either have direct links or a high volume of travel to China. To ensure rapid detection of the novel coronavirus, it is important to have laboratories which can test samples and WHO is supporting countries to improve their testing capacity. Since this is a new virus, there are currently only two referral laboratories in the African region which have the reagents needed to conduct such tests. However, reagent kits are being shipped to more than 20 other countries in the region, so diagnostic capacity is expected to increase over the coming days. Active screening at airports has been established in a majority of these countries and while they will be WHO first areas of focus, the organization will support all countries in the region in their preparation efforts. It is critical that countries step up their readiness and in particular put in place effective screening mechanisms at airports and other major points of entry to ensure that the first cases are detected quickly”.