Aramco weighs sale of stake in natural gas pipelines
Aramco is considering the sale of a stake in its vast natural gas pipeline network to help free up cash and draw more international investors to Saudi Arabia, people familiar with the matter said.
The state-owned energy producer is holding preliminary discussions on the potential move, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. Any deal could raise billions of dollars for Dhahran-based Aramco depending how a transaction is structured, they said.
The discussions are happening barely two weeks after the company announced that a consortium led by Washington-based EIG Global Energy Partners would invest $12.4 billion in its oil pipelines.
It’s unclear if the gas deal would be structured in a similar way. For the oil pipelines, investors will own a 49% stake in a new subsidiary that has leasing rights over the network. Aramco will retain ownership of the oil pipelines themselves and will likely continue to hold a majority stake in the subsidiary.
Governments in the Persian Gulf are increasingly using their energy companies to raise money and bolster their finances following last year’s coronavirus-triggered collapse in oil prices. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. raised more than $10 billion last June by selling leasing rights over its gas pipelines to investors including Global Infrastructure Partners and Brookfield Asset Management. Qatar Petroleum is planning to sell up to $10 billion of what would be its first dollar bonds.
Aramco is also conducting a strategic review of its upstream business in a move that could see it introduce external investors to some of its oil and gas assets, Bloomberg News reported last week. Aramco Chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan has started selling stakes in non-core assets to help maintain the company’s $75 billion dividend, almost all of which goes to the Saudi government.
Aramco’s Master Gas System is a network of pipelines connecting its production with processing sites throughout the kingdom. The infrastructure has a capacity of about 9.6 billion cubic feet per day, according to Aramco’s annual report.
Deliberations are at an early stage, and there’s no certainty Aramco will proceed with a transaction, the people said. Aramco, formally known as Saudi Arabian Oil Co., declined to comment.
The company reshuffled its senior management last year and created a division focused on “portfolio optimization,” which will “assess existing assets” and boost access to growth markets. It is headed by Abdulaziz Al Gudaimi, who reports to Chief Executive Officer Amin Nasser.
Saudi Arabia has the eighth-largest gas reserves globally and the largest in the Arab world after Qatar, according to BP. They had mostly been overlooked by the kingdom as it instead focused on its huge oil deposits. In recent years, the government has sought to increase gas production — which reached a record level in 2020 — to diversify the economy and transition to cleaner fuels for local power plants.
Published : April 28, 2021
By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Dinesh Nair, Archana Narayanan, Matthew Martin
The refugee cap the Biden administration touted – then ditched – is back on the table
WASHINGTON – The White House is again considering setting the number of refugees who can enter the United States through September at about 62,500, according to three people familiar with the deliberations, under pressure from immigrant rights groups furious about President Joe Bidens recent retreat from that target.
Less than two weeks after White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden intends to announce a new cap for the fiscal year by May 15, but signaled that his original target was no longer realistic, people inside and outside the White House suddenly sound hopeful about landing at or near the number the Biden administration announced with some fanfare in February.
More than 30 Senate Democrats on Tuesday called for Biden to put the cap at the original target of 62,500.
“The United States must reject the previous administration’s cruel legacy of anti-refugee policies and return to our longstanding bipartisan tradition of providing safety to the world’s most vulnerable refugees,” the senators, led by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard Durbin, D-Ill., wrote in the letter, which was sent to the White House on Tuesday afternoon and obtained by The Washington Post in advance of its release.
One of the people familiar with the White House deliberations attributed the moving target in part to a review the White House is conducting of policy developments, progress and legal considerations relevant to the decision.
The people familiar with the deliberations, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks and emphasized that no final decisions have been made and that the timing of an announcement was up in the air. The White House has changed course abruptly before, including over the span of several hours on a single day this month, giving people inside and outside the building pause about drawing definitive conclusions about the plan.
During the daily press briefing on Tuesday, Psaki declined to say how likely it was that the president would set the new cap at 62,500. “If the cap is at that or close to that, it will continue to be challenging,” Psaki said.
She said one of the considerations at the White House is what message the nation is sending abroad. “We want to send a clear message, we are welcoming refugees,” she said. The 62,500 number was “always meant to be a down payment” on Biden’s larger pledge for the next fiscal year, Psaki said.
The United States has welcomed refugees – people seeking admission to escape persecution, oppression or warfare overseas – for decades. Presidents are empowered to set annual targets for how many people to try to admit.
The Post reported last week that after he announced he was lifting the cap in early February, Biden grew concerned about the government’s response to the surge of unaccompanied children at the U.S.-Mexico border, prompting a delay in issuing a new directive that frustrated and confused his allies.
On April 16, the White House announced that it would in the meantime keep in place a record-low cap of 15,000 set by the Trump administration last year. Biden overruled his top foreign policy and national security aides, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in deciding to keep the cap. The White House backtracked later that day after fierce blowback from allies.
Psaki said late that day that Biden was expected to set a final, increased cap by May 15 but gave little indication of what it would be, beyond suggesting that the number of refugees the president had previously aimed to admit was probably not feasible. “Given the decimated refugee admissions program we inherited, and burdens on the Office of Refugee Resettlement, his initial goal of 62,500 seems unlikely,” she said in a statement.
The unusual delay underlined the broader political concerns about immigration politics and policy shared by Biden and his top advisers. The president’s own misgivings fueled the decision more than anything else, according to people familiar with the matter. Now, Biden’s own initial opposition to raising the cap injects uncertainty into the ultimate decision.
The latest machinations follow intense private and public pressure from refugee advocates, who have lashed out at the White House for backing away from its promise. In a private videoconference last week, the heads of resettlement agencies who work with the government vented their frustration with White House aides, according to two people with direct knowledge of the conversation.
Ernesto Apreza, a senior adviser for public engagement at the White House, acknowledged during the call that administration officials needed to do a better job of keeping the refugee resettlement groups informed. The White House outreach in recent months “falls very short” of what it should have been, Apreza said, according to a person with direct knowledge of his comments.
Resettlement agency heads vented frustration about the White House strategy during the conversation. Mark Hetfield, the president of HIAS, a Jewish refugee resettlement organization, said the “talking points” he kept hearing from Psaki and others suggested that Biden has “an unwavering commitment to the refugee program.” Hetfield argued that the commitment “wavered for over two months,” according to a second person with knowledge of the conversation.
The tone of the letter senators sent Tuesday is more measured than the reaction some of them had after the earlier announcement.
Biden, in a speech at the State Department on Feb. 4, signaled that he would be much more welcoming of refugees than Donald Trump was as president. He vowed to raise the annual cap to 125,000 for the next fiscal year, which begins in October. On Feb. 12, his administration identified that more immediate step in a report sent to Congress: increasing the cap to 62,500 for the current fiscal year.
But the White House went quiet on the matter for about two months and Biden did not sign the directive known as a presidential determination. In the past, signing the paperwork was seen as a formality.
As the White House offered little explanation for its actions, criticism from Democrats and refugee advocates grew. Then, on April 16, the White House abruptly announced that it was not immediately raising the cap from 15,000.
That same day, Biden changed the regional allocation of refugees, loosening the restrictions Trump had placed on people coming from some African and Muslim-majority countries. Refugee advocates have cheered those efforts.
The president’s increasing concerns during the spring about the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s response to the surge at the border drove the delay, the people familiar with the matter said. The office is part of the Department of Health and Human Services and is responsible for both unaccompanied minors at the border and foreigners seeking refugee status.
Some refugee advocates have not been satisfied by this explanation, arguing that there is enough separation between the two responsibilities to ensure one should not have a huge impact on the other.
Psaki recently said that Biden “remains committed to the aspirational goal” of 125,000 for the next fiscal year.
Fully vaccinated people can go without masks outdoors except in crowded settings, CDC says
WASHINGTON – Federal health officials said Tuesday that fully vaccinated people should feel free to go without masks outdoors when walking, jogging or biking, or dining with friends at outdoor restaurants – a milestone development for tens of millions of pandemic-weary Americans after more than a year of masking up and locking down.
President Joe Biden touted the relaxation of guidance as another reason for people to get vaccinated, urging them to move forward to protect themselves and those around them, and so they can live more normally, by “getting together with friends, going to the park for a picnic without needing a mask.”
Biden had set July 4 as a target for when people could get together for backyard picnics with a sense of normalcy, and both the new mask guidance and his remarks were geared to encouraging people to continue getting the shots.
“I . . . want to thank everyone who has gotten the vaccine for doing your patriotic duty and helping us get on the path to Independence Day,” Biden said in remarks on the North Lawn of the White House. He arrived at the podium wearing a mask. He returned to the White House without one, saying he did not have to put it on until he got back into the building.
The latest guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention comes as more than 52% of eligible people in the United States have gotten at least one shot, but the pace of inoculations appears to be slowing in the face of vaccine hesitancy, especially among rural residents and Republicans who say the risks from the virus are overblown. Uptake has also been slower among communities of color because lack of health services and transportation have slowed access.
Officials said the changed guidance was aimed at helping those who are fully inoculated return safely to old routines, while encouraging others to get their shots to counter highly contagious new variants.
“Over the past year, we have spent a lot of time telling Americans what they cannot do, what they should not do,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said at a White House briefing Tuesday. “Today, I’m going to tell you some of the things you can do if you are fully vaccinated.”
The recommendations also address growing calls from experts in infectious diseases and other public health fields to relax mask mandates for the outdoors because breezes disperse airborne virus particles, distancing is easier, and humidity and sunlight render the coronavirus less viable.
For that reason, the guidance says that even unvaccinated individuals may forgo masks when walking, jogging or biking outdoors with household members. Officials still caution that crowded outdoor settings pose risks and urge everyone – vaccinated and unvaccinated – to wear masks when attending sporting events, live performances and parades.
A growing body of evidence suggests that fully vaccinated people are less likely to have asymptomatic infections or transmit the coronavirus to others. Officials do not know how long protection lasts and how much the vaccines protect against emerging virus variants.
But “taking steps toward relaxing certain measures for vaccinated people may help improve coronavirus vaccine acceptance and uptake,” the guidance states. “Therefore, there are several activities that fully vaccinated people can resume now, at low risk to themselves, while being mindful of the potential risk of transmitting the disease to others.”
– – –
Walensky cited several factors motivating the change in guidance: Falling coronavirus case rates and climbing vaccinations (more than 37% of those over 18 are fully protected) make outdoor settings safer than before. Indoor settings have almost 20 times the risk of transmission than outdoor ones, she noted.
If more people continue getting inoculated and case numbers drop further, she said, the CDC will release additional guidance for the fully vaccinated.
Asked how she would describe the nation’s situation now compared to last month when she spoke of a feeling of “impending doom” as infections mounted, Walensky said that if the United States follows measures taken by other countries where “vaccinations continue to soar and the cases plummet, that we should be in good shape.”
In addressing states that have outdoor mask requirements, Walensky said it is no longer necessary for fully vaccinated people to wear masks unless they are in crowded outdoor venues, such as stadiums and concerts, where it is hard to know who is vaccinated and who is not.
Tuesday’s guidance includes a color-coded chart that shows activities that fully vaccinated and unvaccinated people can do indoors and outdoors, and which ones can be done without masks. The safest activities, highlighted in green, are outdoors in small gatherings. Activities with the greatest risk are indoor settings that involve behaviors such as singing, shouting, heavy breathing, inability to wear a mask or inability to maintain physical distancing, such as indoor high-intensity exercise class.
The nearly 96 million Americans who are fully vaccinated can now forgo masks for many outdoor activities, including:
– Walking, running, hiking or biking outdoors alone or with members of your household
– Attending a small outdoor gathering with fully vaccinated family and friends
– Attending a small outdoor gathering with a mix of fully vaccinated and unvaccinated people
– Dining at an outdoor restaurant with friends from multiple households
Officials say some factors increase risk: crowding, time spent, lack of ventilation and high community transmission. That’s why the CDC says it is safest for fully vaccinated people to continue to wear well-fitted masks in these settings, including:
– Attending a crowded outdoor event, such as a live performance, parade or sporting event
– Visiting a barber or hair salon
– Going to an uncrowded indoor shopping mall or museum
– Going to an indoor movie theater
– Attending a full-capacity service at a house of worship
– Singing in an indoor choir
“The examples today show that when you are fully vaccinated, you can return to many activities safely . . . and begin to get back to normal,” Walensky said. “And the more people who are vaccinated, the more steps we can take toward spending time with people we love, doing the things we love to enjoy. I hope this message is encouraging for you. It shows just how powerful these vaccines are.”
The agency also provided guidance for fully vaccinated people in regard to working, quarantining and testing. Fully vaccinated workers no longer need to quarantine after an exposure, as long as they do not have symptoms. And fully vaccinated people without symptoms or known exposures may be exempted from routine screening tests – a change of enormous significance for schools trying to plan for summer school and fall reopening.
Monica Gandhi, an infectious-diseases expert at the University of California at San Francisco, applauded the CDC’s action after saying accumulating evidence shows the low risk of outdoor transmission.
“Viral particles disperse effectively in the outside air,” she said in an email, citing numerous studies, including one in Wuhan, China, that found that one of 7,324 infection events investigated was linked to outdoor transmission.
Gandhi noted that the World Health Organization says masks are not necessary outside unless physical distancing, which the agency defines as about three feet, cannot be maintained.
She and others have said it’s important for public health officials to provide incentives as “a great strategy to encourage those who are on the fence to get vaccinated.”
“Public health messaging since the time of HIV that focuses on positive, rather than negative, reinforcement has been shown to be more effective, so the CDC guidelines that vaccinated people don’t have to mask outdoors will hopefully help persuade some of the vaccine hesitant in the U.S. to get the vaccine,” Gandhi said.
The CDC guidance said there is limited data on vaccine protection in people who are immunocompromised. It urged people taking immunosuppressive medications to discuss the need for personal protective measures with their health-care providers, even if they are fully vaccinated.
– – –
Even before the CDC’s announcement, some states were moving to ease mask mandates: Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, on Monday cleared groups of fewer than 1,000 people to gather outside without masks. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, on Tuesday said his state’s rule requiring masks outdoors would expire Friday, except in situations where social distancing is impossible.
The issue has become even more politically charged recently as conservative media figures have used their platforms online and on cable news to turn outdoor masking rules into a cause celebre. Fox News host Tucker Carlson urged viewers this week to contact child protective services to report the parents of children who wore masks outdoors.
“Your response when you see children wearing masks as they play should be no different from your response to seeing someone beat a kid in Walmart,” he said on his show, which is among the most watched on cable, regularly drawing 3 million viewers. “Call the police immediately, contact child protective services. Keep calling until someone arrives.”
His instructions were echoed Tuesday morning by Mollie Hemingway, a senior editor at The Federalist, a conservative publication. She tweeted: “Even if you’re an outdoor mask enthusiast at this late date, despite the complete lack of scientific support for same, I think we all can agree that masking children outdoors, at the very least, is abusive, right?”
The comments illustrate how face coverings, which were scorned by President Donald Trump, remain a marker of political identity more than a year into the pandemic.
Hong Kong to reopen bars, nightclubs to vaccinated people.
Hong Kong will ease social-distancing restrictions by allowing bars, nightclubs and karaoke parlors to reopen and operate past midnight only for vaccinated residents starting Thursday, as the government intensifies efforts to boost the citys lackluster inoculation drive.
Staff and customers must have had received at least a first vaccine dose for the venues to open their doors, Food and Health Secretary Sophia Chan told a briefing on Tuesday. Patrons will need to sign in using Hong Kong’s LeaveHomeSafe app.
The new rules will allow bars and nightclubs to remain open until 2 a.m., she said. Tables will be limited to just two people, with four people allowed in karaoke rooms.
The government is also studying a new mobile app venues can use identify customers’ vaccination status, Chan said.
“This vaccine bubble is a very important public health measure,” Chan said. “We can have a safe relaxation. But on the other hand, we can also mitigate the risk associated with the relaxation.”
While vaccine supply is abundant in Hong Kong, only about 11% of the population has gotten vaccinated with at least one dose, amid public distrust of the government and concerns about the efficacy of Chinese vaccines. The low inoculation rates could hamper the city’s efforts to reach the herd immunity crucial to fully reopening, prompting authorities to expand access to all adults and come up with measures favoring the inoculated to encourage more people to get jabs.
Restaurants will also be allowed to relax table limits and operating hours if staff are vaccinated, said Chan, but only in designated “zones” for inoculated customers.
Eateries whose staff have all received their first vaccine doses will be allowed to extend their dine-in hours to 12 a.m. and have up to six customers per table in the zones. Patrons will be required to sign in via LeaveHomeSafe. Capacity will be limited to 50%.
Measures will be further relaxed for restaurants whose staff have had both vaccine doses and a waiting period afterward of 14 days, Chan said.
Those eateries can operate until 2 a.m. and allow up to eight diners per table in the zones. Customers must be vaccinated with at least one dose and register to dine using LeaveHomeSafe. Capacity will be limited to 75%.
Capacity at companies’ annual general meetings with shareholders will also be relaxed to 50 people at indoor venues and 100 people at outdoor sites, Chan said. Participants aged 16 and above have to have completed their first vaccine doses, she said.
Pubs have been ordered shut since November but some have managed to operate until 10 p.m. by getting a license to serve food, while nightclubs have stayed closed. The ease in measures for those vaccinated comes after Hong Kong announced its long-awaited plans to introduce a quarantine-free travel bubble with Singapore next month.
Published : April 28, 2021
By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Felix Tam, Natalie Lung, Alfred Liu
India politicians vow to pay women for housework as virus rages
As India battles the worlds worst virus outbreak, some key political parties are promising an unprecedented monthly payment to all homemakers in a bid to win crucial state elections.
If enacted the stipends would be some of the first in the world to specifically address women’s unpaid labor, which economists estimate accounts for up to 39% of global GDP and is often absent from official statistics. They would also represent a major cultural shake-up in a nation where women are overwhelmed with domestic duties and their participation in the workforce is among the lowest on the planet — a predicament exacerbated by covid-19.
India’s epidemic, which is now overwhelming hospitals in major cities, has hit women particularly hard. Many have reported a substantial or total loss of income since a nationwide lockdown last year, and housework has risen significantly as unemployed male migrants returned home.
Out of five states that count votes on Sunday, three are likely to implement the stipends. Both the ruling coalition and the opposition contenders down south in Tamil Nadu and Kerala have promised monthly income support to homemakers. That includes the country’s main opposition Congress party, which has pledged 2,000 rupees ($27) for homemakers each month in both the northeastern state of Assam and Kerala.
In West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee — one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s top political opponents nationally — has also promised monthly income support to female heads of 16 million households of up to 1,000 rupees per month.
After coming to power in 2011, Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress positioned itself as a progressive alternative to Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party by launching a series of gender equity and social justice programs. While the BJP hasn’t adopted a similar policy for homemakers, it has several programs targeting women such as free education for girls and quotas for government jobs.
“The needle is slow to move on sticky social and cultural norms, but small positive steps can engender further change,” said Nalini Gulati, an economist at the London-based think tank International Growth Centre, and the managing editor of the research platform ‘Ideas for India.’
“Monthly income support by state governments — if implemented effectively — will put money in the hands of those who have been cash-strapped during the pandemic and address their unmet consumption needs,” she said. “This can also contribute towards creating demand in the economy as a whole.”
Uplifting women is vital for Asia’s third largest economy as Modi pushes to attract foreign investment and boost India’s economic heft globally. India’s gross domestic product could grow by 27% if women’s participation in the economy was raised to the same level as that of men, according to research by the International Monetary Fund.
Close to three-quarters of women are excluded from the workforce, leaving India ranked 145th out of 153 countries, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap report. The low participation is because about 60% of women take on full time domestic duties like cleaning, cooking, fetching water and giving care to children and in-laws, India’s Economic Survey reported in January.
Although women spend nearly six hours a day on unpaid domestic work compared with less than an hour for men, their contribution at home isn’t recorded in India’s national income.
The pledges to pay women for housework comes amid global debate about whether societies should do more to recognize and compensate women for the work they perform at home.
While more steps are required — including redistributing unpaid work in the household and better infrastructure to reduce the time it takes women to procure water and cooking fuel — the payments are a good start, according to Prabha Kotiswaran, a professor at the King’s college London who has written articles on the economic worth of homemakers.
“It is a globally unprecedented move,” she said, “which is necessary in a country where there is zero recognition of women’s unpaid work.”
Published : April 28, 2021
By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Bibhudatta Pradhan
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