一 | Dozens of businesses, government offices, vehicles, and at least three police stations went up in flames in Freetown, Makeni, Kamakwie, and other cities across Sierra Leone from August 10 through 12, with over 113 people arrested and police introducing an emergency nationwide curfew and deploying tear gas and live ammunition to disperse crowds.,The curfew was lifted on August 13, with banks, businesses, government offices, and most stores reopened and communal services beginning to clear the damage. However, ramped-up security measures, including federal troop deployments to assist police, have been left in place.,What Happened?,Sierra Leone is one of the poorest nations in the world, ranking 186 out of 198 in a recent GDP purchasing power parity ranking. An estimated 80 percent of the population lives in poverty, many of them in the country’s rural areas. Like other nations in Africa, the country has faced special difficulties amid the global economic calamity brought on by COVID, and exacerbated by Western restrictions on Russian exports of agricultural goods and fertilizers amid the security crisis in Ukraine, which has caused a major jump in food prices.,AfricaAnti-Russia Sanctions Left Africa Without Access to Grain and Fertilisers, African Union Chief Says3 June, 11:13 GMT,As a net importer of both energy and food, Sierra Leone is especially vulnerable to global economic conditions, and along with food and fertilizers, fuel and electricity costs have also soared. Food prices alone have jumped by over 40 percent over the past few months, with a bag of rice once costing 350 leones now going for over 500. The country’s Central Bank recently removed three zeros from the national currency in a bid to restore confidence. The country has also been overcome by weeks of strikes by government workers, including doctors and teachers, and by small traders protesting poor conditions.,Coup Plot?,However, President Julius Maada Bio has also accused protesters of having ulterior motives beyond the cost of living crisis.,“This was not a protest against the high cost of living occasioned by the ongoing global economic crisis. The chant of the insurrectionists was for a violent overthrow of the democratically-elected government,” Bio said in an address on August 12 after returning to the country from a holiday in London.,Local media pointed to the chants of “Bio must go” among protesters as they gathered in the capital, and the president accused some of the demonstrators of consisting of “APC Warriors,” a reference to the opposition All People’s Congress party, which governed the country from 2007 until 2018, when Bio’s Sierra Leone People’s Party won national elections.,No doubt mindful of the violent civil war which shook the country between 1991 and 2002, claiming as many as 70,000 lives and displacing over 2.5 million people, Bio vowed that “in the coming weeks and months, [the] government will undertake necessary security actions meant to guarantee the peace and security of all citizens.”,“The security forces will, and must, act with great restraint and within their professional codes of service. But be assured that my government will crack down hard on violent insurrectionists, their collaborators, their sponsors and their supporters. My government will relentlessly fight those who would rather use terror and gruesome violence to achieve political goals,” the president said.,As a government, we will continue our engagement with Civil Society as we strive to promote sustainable peace, national cohesion and socio-economic development in Sierra Leone. #newdirectionagenda— President Julius Maada Bio (@PresidentBio) August 18, 2022,Bio did not elaborate on who these “sponsors” and “supporters” were, or whether they included any foreign actors.,Geopolitical Context,Like other African nations, Sierra Leone recently rejected calls by Washington and Brussels to show solidarity with the West and Ukraine and impose sanctions on Russia. But even before the escalation of the Ukraine crisis, relations between Freetown and Washington were tense at times. Last year, US President Joe Biden snubbed Bio by refusing to invite the African leader to the US’ so-called “Democracy Summit.” No reasons were given. However, neighboring Liberia, which faced mass civil unrest of its own between 2019 and 2020, and whose officials have been sanctioned by the US over suspected corruption, did get an invite.,While Sierra Leone maintains economic and political ties with its former British colonial masters, and remains a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, Freetown has sought to expand its partnerships with other geopolitical power centers, including Russia and China. President Bio attended the Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi in 2019, where he discussed ways to strengthen economic cooperation between the distant nations. In February 2021, Freetown signed onto Moscow’s efforts to prevent the deployment of weapons in outer space. In May 2021, Bio spoke by phone to President Xi Jinping of China, where they discussed the friendly, “brotherly” relations between the two nations, as well Chinese assistance to Freetown in measures against COVID, and agricultural and economic development.,In this context, the reactions of major foreign powers to this month’s unrest have been telling. While the United States, Britain, and the European Union collectively expressed “grave concern” over the “disturbing reports of violence” and urged the parties to “stay calm, promote accountability and ensure respect for human rights,” China’s Embassy smoothed over the protests altogether, refraining from wagging its finger at Freetown and instead trumpeting the expanding cooperation between the two countries.,We are gravely concerned by reports of violence surrounding today’s demonstrations in Sierra Leone. We urge all parties to stay calm, promote accountability, and ensure respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.— Bureau of African Affairs (@AsstSecStateAF) August 10, 2022,Similarly, while UK High Commissioner to Sierra Leone Lisa Chesney lectured President Bio about how “violence has no place in a democracy and the necessary investigation into August 10 can sit alongside de-escalation,” the Russian Embassy in the Republic of Guinea, which concurrently serves as the Embassy in Sierra Leone, only presented a bare bones report on the situation in the country, Bio’s meetings with community and tribal leaders, and indicated that an internal “debriefing” was being created “regarding the causes, course and consequences of the riots on August 10.”。
二 | Chevron is buying Hess Corp. for $53 billion and it’s not even the biggest acquisition in the energy sector this month as major producers seize the initiative while oil prices surge.Crude prices rose sharply in early 2022 with Russia's invasion of Ukraine and are hovering around $90 per barrel after ticking another 9% higher this year. That has made big drillers cash rich and they are looking for places to invest. The Chevron-Hess deal comes less than two weeks after Exxon Mobil said that it would acquire Pioneer Natural Resources for about $60 billion. Upward pressure on oil prices are being applied from a number of fronts including the war in Ukraine. Oil markets are being stretched by cutbacks in oil production from Saudi Arabia and Russia, and now, a war between Israel and Hamas runs the risk of igniting a broader conflict in the Middle East. While attacks on Israel do not disrupt global oil supply, according to an analysis by the U.S Energy Information Administration, “they raise the potential for oil supply disruptions and higher oil prices.”Chevron said Monday that the acquisition of Hess adds a major oil field in Guyana as well as shale properties in the Bakken Formation in North Dakota. Guyana is a South American country of 791,000 people that is poised to become the world’s fourth-largest offshore oil producer, placing it ahead of Qatar, the United States, Mexico and Norway. It has become a major producer in recent years with oil giants, including Exxon Mobil, China’s CNOOC, and also Hess, squared off in a heated competition for highly lucrative oil fields in northern South America.“This combination is aligned with our objective to safely deliver higher returns and lower carbon,” Chevron Chairman and CEO Mike Wirth said in prepared remarks. “In addition, Hess increases Chevron’s estimated production and free cash flow growth rates over the next five years, and is expected to extend our growth profile into the next decade supporting our plans to increase our peer-leading dividend growth and share repurchases.”=Chevron is paying for Hess with stock. Hess shareholders will receive 1.0250 shares of Chevron for each Hess share. Including debt, Chevron valued the deal at $60 billion. And even with alarms being raised over climate change after a summer of record-smashing temperatures, elevated energy prices have driven more exploration and more drilling, and big payouts for investors. There have been a number of acquisitions focused on U.S. shale fields and another round of consolidation in the energy sector began during the pandemic as big producers sought to cut costs. In the summer of 2020, Chevron announced that it was buying Noble Energy for $5 billion. Chevron made the deal when crude prices were down more than 30% in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. That same year, ConocoPhillips bought shale producer Concho Resources in an all-stock deal valued at $9.7 billion.Last month Britain gave the go-ahead for a major oil and gas project in the North Sea, ignoring warnings from scientists and the United Nations that countries must stop developing new fossil fuel resources if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate change.Chevron said the deal will help to increase the amount of cash given back to shareholders. The company anticipates that in January it will be able to recommend boosting its first-quarter dividend by 8% to $1.63. This would still need board approval. The company also expects to increase stock buybacks by $2.5 billion to the top end of its guidance range of $20 billion per year once the transaction closes.The boards of both Chevron and Hess have approved the deal announced Monday after six months of negotiations, and is targeted to close in the first half of next year. It still needs approval by Hess shareholders. John Hess, the company's CEO, is expected to join Chevron’s board. His family owns a large chunk of Hess. Shares of Chevron Corp., based in San, Ramon, California, declined more than 3% Monday. Share of Hess Corp., based in New York City, fell slightly.。
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