The United States on Tuesday said it is suspending Ethiopia’s duty-free access to the U.S. market, citing “gross violations of internationally recognized human rights,”.

Mali and Guinea will also lose access under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).

“Today, President Biden announced three countries will be terminated from the AGOA trade preference program as of January 1, 2022, absent urgent action to meet statutory eligibility criteria,” said U.S. top trade negotiator Ambassador Katherine Tai in a statement.

“Our Administration is deeply concerned by the unconstitutional change in governments in both Guinea and Mali, and by the gross violations of internationally recognized human rights being perpetrated by the Government of Ethiopia and other parties amid the widening conflict in northern Ethiopia.”

The move against Ethiopia comes as a result of a yearlong civil war in the northern Tigray region, which has caused a humanitarian crisis.

Already under the strain of war and the COVID-19 pandemic, the loss of access to the U.S. market will further weaken Ethiopia’s economy. According to Bloomberg, Ethiopia exported $245 million worth of goods to the U.S. under AGOA. That accounted for half the country’s exports to the U.S.

In addition to suspended access via AGOA, the Biden administration recently authorized sanctions against Ethiopian individuals it said are prolonging the war in the northern part of the country.

On Wednesday, the United Nations and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission are releasing a report with the results of their investigation into alleged human rights violations in the Tigray war.

Without a renewal, AGOA is set to expire in 2025.

OPEC and its allies are likely to stick to plans to raise oil output by 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) at an OPEC+ meeting on Thursday, despite calls from the United States for extra supply to cool rising prices.

Oil prices flipped to gains on Thursday as investors expect top producers to stand pat on output policy, shrugging off earlier concerns about the resumption of Iran nuclear talks that could result in more oil exports from Tehran.

Brent futures and U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude pared losses of more than 1% as traders shifted focus to a meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, including Russia, a group known as OPEC+, later on Thursday.

The group is expected to reconfirm plans to keep monthly supply increases steady, despite calls for an acceleration.

Brent was up 47 cents, or 0.6%, at $82.46 a barrel by 0751 GMT, while WTI nudged up 2 cents to $80.88 a barrel after having slipped as low as $79.74.

Prices were down earlier, after Iran and six powers agreed to resume talks on Nov. 29 to revive the 2015 nuclear deal in Vienna. Iran has demanded that the United States drop sanctions that have limited its oil export.

In a bid to find solutions to the continues hike in price of cooking gas in the country, President, Nigeria LPG Association, NLPGA, Nuhu Yakubu, has attributed the shortage and high prices to issues such as the recent introduction of Value Added Tax, VAT, the difficulty associated with getting access to foreign exchange and extortion at various locations in the value chain.

Yakubu said, “We have been discussing with the government to grant fiscal incentives to local producers to enable them to fund infrastructure development to improve local production. Incentives include low interest bearing intervention funds, reversal on VAT on imported LPG, etc.

“Since over 50 to 60 per cent of domestic consumption is sourced from imports, we have equally argued for reversal on the recent policy of VAT on imported LPG.

“Equally due to the fact that domestic consumption is heavily reliant on imports, we have argued for Federal Government to grant improved access to forex for LPG importers.

“We are also discussing the possibility of allowing more export cargo to be channeled to domestic consumption, bearing in mind, however, the export contract obligations of respective export producers.

“We have called for zero-tolerance for extortion at depots and terminals by unions and associations.

“These extortions by way of levies have become too much and now constitute a significant percentage of retail pump price build-up.

“These are some of the areas we are currently advising the government on.”

However, data from the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, PPPRA, indicated that more LPG has been supplied across the country this year compared to the corresponding period in 2020.

The data showed that as of August 2021, 740,675.72MT of cooking gas, indicating an increase of 9.6 per cent, was supplied in 2021 compared to 675,814.72MT supplied in the first eight months of last year.

The PPPRA data also indicated that despite having one of the world’s largest gas reserves and leading exporter of Liquefied Natural Gas, the bulk of LPG consumed in Nigeria is imported from the global market.

According to the latest data, in August 2021, 55.4 per cent of the 85,264.803MT supplied nationwide was imported from the USA, Algeria and Equatorial Guinea while 44.6 per cent was sourced locally.

In any case, the rising prices of LPG constitute a serious threat to the Federal Government’s plan to increase the usage of gas as the clean energy of choice for energy transition campaign.

Spain faces a fresh energy crisis after Algeria shut off supplies of natural gas through one of the two pipelines linking Spain with the North African state.

Like many other European countries, Spain has been hit hard by soaring electricity prices in recent months.

A surge in demand as the world’s economies began to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic has not been matched by supply, sending prices climbing.

Households have been hit by electricity prices which rose more than 40% in the past year, prompting the Spanish government to bring in emergency measures to reduce bills.

Now the fresh crisis over natural gas supplies from their North African neighbors has added to tensions in the energy market for Spain.

Algeria closed a land pipeline Sunday after a diplomatic dispute with its neighbor Morocco, through which the pipeline passes.

Algiers agreed to keep open a second pipeline which passes under the Mediterranean to Spain, but this does not supply as much natural gas as the land pipeline through Morocco.

Without any natural energy source except the burgeoning renewables market, Spain depends on Algeria for its natural gas supply.

Spain’s geographic isolation in western Europe and lack of any domestic source of energy has left it especially vulnerable.

The Spanish media have reported that the country could face possible blackouts because of energy shortages.

El Pais, a Spanish-language daily newspaper, reported Tuesday that Spain would have to deliver liquified natural gas, or LNG, supplies by ship which could prove costly as other countries are competing for the same supplies because of a world shortage of the energy source.