Day: September 7, 2020

China fixes $73 price per dose for home-grown COVID-19 vaccine

Aoko Benjamin

  China has publicly presented its homegrown covid-19 vaccines for the first time, as the country where the virus was first discovered, looks to shape the narrative surrounding the pandemic with a price tag of bow $146 for 2 doses if the vaccine. A lot of high hopes hang on the vaccine candidates produced by Chinese companies, Sinovac Biotech and Sinopharm which are on display at a Beijing trade fair this week. Although none of these vaccine candidates has hit the market, the drugmakers hope that they will be approved…

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Number of Petrol Stations in Nigeria hits 33,333 – DPR’s forensic audit reveals

Efe Wellington

  Nigeria’s oil industry regulator, Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) has concluded the forensic audit of petrol retail outlets across the country, declaring that the official number is now 33,333. The agency, which confirmed this in a statementswnt to Platforms Africa, added that it has ordered 9,000 petrol stations, being the 27 per cent of the total units uncovered through the audit across the country to immediately commence the upgrade of their facilities to allow them dispense gas to vehicles for transportation. This is in furtherance of the Federal Government’s…

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Court slams N5m damages on Access bank, indicts lender of customer’s relationship breach

Damilola Olonade

  A High Court sotting in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, has slammed a N5 million damages on Access Bank to be paid to its customers, Blaid Construction Limited and Blaid Properties, over a breach of bank-customer relationship. The Court also declared, according to a report by Premium Times, that a post-no-debit alert action by the bank and continued denial of the customers’ rights to access and operate their accounts since 2015 were unlawful, illegal and void except within the periods between July and September, 2016. “Justice I.O Harrison of the…

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How Oil firms burnt $787.7m worth of Nigerian gas, polluted air in 7 months

Precious Ibekwe

International Oil Companies (IOCs) and their local counterparts have burnt $787.7 million worth of Nigerian gas from different oilfields in the country’s Niger Delta. Through Gas flaring in Nigeria’s oil fields, the companies burnt 225.1 billion standard cubic feet of gas, (bscf) between January and July 2020, checks by Platforms  Africa showed. The monetary value of the burnt gas in the international market is $787.7 million (about N299.33 billion). This is a surge from the data of flare given by National Environmental Economic and Development Study, NEEDS, which reads that…

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Saudi triples VAT, ambargoes monthly allowance for citizens

Aliyu Aliyu

  Saudi Arabia’s finance minister on Monday said the kingdom will triple its Value Added Tax and halt monthly handout payments to citizens in new austerity measures amid record low oil prices and a coronavirus-led economic slump. The measures, which could stir public resentment with the cost of living rising, come as the petro-state steps up emergency plans to slash government spending to deal with the twin economic blow. “It has been decided the cost of living allowance will be halted from June 2020 and VAT will be raised from…

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NNPC denies AKK project’s $1.527bn inflation allegation

Efe Wellington

  The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has dismissed, in its entirety, the allegation that the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano (AKK) Gas Pipeline Project was inflated to the tune of $1.527billion, describing the accusation by an online medium against the National Oil Company as false, baseless and unfounded. A release in Abuja by the Corporation’s Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs, Dr. Kennie Obateru, stated that the NNPC was considering instituting legal actions against the medium and her collaborators. NNPC stated in the release that the corporation brought the unfounded accusation to the…

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