The Weekly Lift - October 27, 2022

Dear Readers:

To quote the late Queen Elizabeth II when referring to 1992, could 2022 be another "annus horribilis" for the United Kingdom? The country has had a tumultuous few weeks, prompting a pundit to write: "My son has?lived?through?four?chancellors, three home secretaries,?two?prime ministers and?two?monarchs.?He's?four?months old."

This was a funny perspective but a grave assessment of the country's political and economic turmoil. This crisis by-and-large self inflicted, by a Prime Minister and her team that put forth politics over pragmatism, only to see their policies abort before take off. Liz Truss now bears the title of the shortest tenured PM and has plunged the UK in a crisis that some predict will take months if not years to overcome.

Many have welcomed the anointment of Rishi Sunak as new PM with a sign of relief. He is a young, charismatic and respected politician (and very rich), the former Finance Minister under Boris Johnson, credited for keeping the United Kingdom afloat during the pandemic. Critics perceive him as out of touch with the middle class because of his immense wealth, but many hope he will steer the UK back into economic stability.

The more remarkable and perhaps even celebrated significance of this anointment is the fact that Mr. Sunak is the 57th, yet the first non-white Prime Minister in the United Kingdom (see article below). His family originates from the Punjab region in India, a country that has had a very complicated colonial relationship with the United Kingdom, more recently symbolized by it claiming the right to Koh-i-Noor, one of the largest diamonds in the world,?set in the Crown of Queen Elizabeth II.

The appointment of a diverse Prime Minister in the United Kingdom should not overshadow the persistent issues of discrimination and racial tensions in the country, the same way the election of Barak Obama as President did not resolve minority rights in the United States. Far from it. However, The Weekly Lift believes it establishes precedent and hope for more representation, particularly for the 8 million non-whites, including 1.5 million residents from Indian descent, living in the United Kingdom.

The new Prime Minister, celebrating Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights, on the day of his anointment and in front of his official residence, 10 Downing Street, could not be more serendipitous and symbolic.

This week's selection of headlines and articles*:

Diversity: Rishi Sunak To Become U.K. Prime Minister, First Person Of Color In Role

The Washington Post (US) reports that "after months of political fever, Britain on Tuesday will get a new prime minister, the third in two months, with the country now looking to Rishi Sunak — a former finance minister and hedge-fund manager, a 42-year-old whiz kid,?richer than the royals — to beat back the harshest economic head winds here in a generation, including some of his own creation.

Sunak, a practicing Hindu of Indian descent, will be the first person of color to serve in Britain’s highest office, and his Conservative Party leadership win Monday, coinciding with the festival of Diwali, marked a moment of jubilation among many in Britain with South Asian heritage.

Sunak’s rise to the top office is especially significant in a country that has sometimes struggled to grapple with the legacy of its colonialist past. Britain ruled India for almost a century, from 1858 to 1947, and the modern-day United Kingdom is filled with the children and grandchildren of immigrants from the former realm.

In Southall, an area of west London sometimes called Little India for its large diaspora, people in the streets celebrated Sunak — even though many residents support the opposition Labour Party. “If Rishi Sunak ever dreamed he would be prime minister on Diwali day, well, you couldn’t take bets on this. What a wonderful thing,” said Davinderpal Singh Kooner, 67, a dental surgeon, who was speaking outside a temple as young children lit candles behind him.

“It’s a unique moment to have an Asian PM,” he said — pausing for the fireworks that burst in a bright display of red above his head — “it’s a pivotal moment in the politics of this country.” Hardeep Marwa, 45, a tech worker with the National Health Service, said his friends were talking about Sunak’s win as “an Obama moment.” “It’s opening the door for South Asians to go into politics,” Marwa said.

Others in Britain were not so celebratory — for the fact was that members of the public in this race were mere spectators, with no role to play, as Conservative Party lawmakers in the House of Commons concluded, based on votes by 357 members, that Sunak was their savior.

In a brief televised address, his first as Tory leader, Sunak paid tribute to the “dignity and grace” of outgoing prime minister Liz Truss — whose six-week tenure was an unprecedented disaster — and warned that Britain faced a “profound economic challenge.” In those few words, the sunny forecasts of a post-Brexit “Global Britain,” previously sold by Sunak and his predecessors, began to be grounded in new realities.

Sunak vowed to serve with “integrity and humility” — qualities he suggested were lacking when he?resigned from Boris Johnson's government and led a revolt against his former boss. He called for “stability and unity” — in other words, the opposite of the tumult and divisions that characterized Truss’s tenure.

Opposition politicians don’t appear to be leaving much leeway for a honeymoon period. On Monday, they continued their calls for a general election. Labour lawmaker Angela Rayner complained that Sunak’s accession was a coronation and that the Tories could not “keep doling out prime ministers every month.” Labour leader?Keir Starmer charged that Sunak was “covered in the mess” that 12 years of Conservative rule had created.

Sunak is a center-right moderate who promises to craft a prudent path to balance Britain’s books and address its sky-high debt, which is partly a result of his own borrowing. Sunak wrote big checks as chancellor under Johnson during the pandemic. He had the government cover up to 80 percent of wages for millions of furloughed British workers — one of the most generous pandemic subsidies in the world. He also promoted a month of?subsidized meals in August 2020, dubbed “Eat Out to Help Out “or “Rishi’s dishes,” designed to get Britons back into eateries.

The pandemic bills around the world are now coming due. And Britain’s predicament was made worse by Truss’s plan to slash taxes for the wealthy and corporations and double down on borrowing, hoping for a surge in supply-side growth.

Even after Truss gutted her plan and announced her resignation, the country’s top stock index, the FTSE 100, is struggling. The pound has been pounded and is trading with the dollar at $1.13. The Bank of England is predicting a recession for Britain in the coming months. Inflation has crested at 10.1 percent, a 40-year high, with the cost of living soaring because of higher energy and food costs, driven in part by Russia’s?war in Ukraine.

The Moody’s ratings agency lowered Britain’s economic outlook from “stable” to “negative” on Friday, citing “the heightened unpredictability in policymaking amid a volatile domestic political landscape” and “the risk of more persistent inflation.” Once-stolid Britain has become something of a global laughingstock, a Northern European version of Italy, with its constant churn of direction and leaders, as allies ask: Who has the keys to this car?

Johnson entertained a return to the driver’s seat, mounting a bid that fizzled Sunday. He said he had enough support to proceed to a vote among Conservative Party lawmakers Monday — a claim that was not reflected in tallies of declared lawmakers by the BBC and the Guardian. Johnson said, “I believe I have much to offer but I am afraid that this is simply not the right time.”

Dark-horse challenger Penny Mordaunt, the Conservative leader in the House of Commons, withdrew Monday just ahead of a deadline to secure endorsements. “It is clear that colleagues feel we needed certainty today,” Mordaunt said in a message?psoted to Twitter. “This decision is a historic one and shows, once again, the diversity and talent of our party. Rishi has my full support.”

There’s never been a prime minister quite like Sunak. Many in India and its diaspora hailed the milestone in British politics as a testament to the country’s multiculturalism — contrasting with a history of colonialism and racism.

In India, the development took on additional meaning, particularly among nationalists who celebrated the prospect of a politician of Indian origin — and a practicing Hindu — taking the reins of a former colonial power that once ruled their country. Indian Prime Minister?Narendra Modi sent his congratulations to Sunak, referring to him as “the ‘living bridge’ of UK Indians” and expressing hope that together they would “transform our historic ties into a modern partnership.”

In Britain, Sunak’s heritage was being celebrated as “going against the grain of deeply racial hierarchies,” said Avinash Paliwal, a lecturer in diplomacy at the School of Oriental and African Studies. But in India, he added, “it’ll be celebrated and feed into the popular narrative of rising Indian — even Hindu — global power.”

Anuj Dhar, a Delhi-based author who has written about Indian freedom fighters, hailed the “incredible feat” that a person of Indian descent would lead Britain. And Priti Gandhi, a leader in India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, said she cheered “with great joy” the rise of a “proud Hindu who publicly acknowledges and respects his culture and roots.”

Moving into Downing Street will be step down for Sunak. He is?one of the wealthiest people in Britain. Sunak, a former banker, and his wife, Indian tech heiress Akshata Murty, have an estimated fortune of about $827 million, according to the Sunday Times Rich List. On the same list, published before the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the monarch was estimated to have about $420 million.

The couple’s money comes primarily from Murty’s stake in her father’s company, Infosys, which also employs thousands of workers in Britain. Earlier this year, Sunak’s wife was at the center of a tax scandal after it emerged that she had been filing in the United Kingdom as a “non-domiciled” resident, which allowed her to avoid paying British taxes on the substantial income she earned abroad.

Sunak was asked about his wealth during the last leadership contest. He denied that being rich made him out of touch. “I tend not to judge people by how much is in their bank account, I judge them by their value and their actions,” he said."

International Relations: Ethiopian Government And Tigray Rebels Set To Begin Peace Talks

The New York Times (US) reports that representatives of the Ethiopian government and rebel forces in the country’s Tigray region arrived in South Africa on Monday for their first formal peace talks, a much-anticipated effort to resolve the almost two-year civil war that has ravaged Africa’s second-most-populous nation.

The mediation, led by the African Union, has new urgency because the conflict in Tigray has intensified, raising fears that the humanitarian crisis and widespread atrocities that have left thousands dead, millions displaced and hundreds of thousands hungry will only get worse.

The Ethiopian military and its Eritrean allies captured several major towns from Tigrayan forces in recent days, too, advancing toward the regional capital, Mekelle, and leaving Tigrayan leaders with a weaker hand in the delicate negotiations.

The talks have taken months to organize and were scheduled to start earlier this month but ran into logistical and organizational challenges — including a high degree of mistrust on both sides. The negotiations are now set to begin on Tuesday after the mediators finalized the framework for the talks on Monday, according to a senior Western official with knowledge of the process.

The formal talks have drawn the attention of global leaders, who have urged the warring parties to seek a political resolution that would halt the indiscriminate killings, shelling and human rights violations that have surged anew since a five-month humanitarian truce?was shattered in August.

“The situation in Ethiopia is spiraling out of control,” the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres,?warned in a speech last week. “We need the urgent resumption of talks towards an effective, lasting political settlement.”

The peacemaking efforts in South Africa are aimed at halting?an internecine conflict that began in November 2020, when the Ethiopian government, led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, a onetime rebel movement that had dominated the country’s politics for nearly three decades, began clashing in northern Ethiopia.

A new wave of violence followed the breakdown in August of a five-month cease-fire: Government airstrikes and artillery bombardment have?killed civilians and aid workers, and a gush of hate speech and incitement to violence has?spread through social media.

The peace talks between the Ethiopian government and the Tigrayans are being steered by a three-person team of negotiators: the former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo; the former South African deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka; and Uhuru Kenyatta, who was until recently the president of Kenya.

The African Union, which convened the meeting, and the South African government, which is hosting it, have not provided any details about the format of the talks, how long they will last or where they will take place."

Sustainability: Will India Become A Green Superpower?

The Economist (UK) reports that "it gets almost?three-quarters of its electricity from coal, and has 39 new coal-fired power plants under construction. It digs up and burns more of the stuff than any other country except China. And it is coal’s loudest advocate internationally: at last year’s climate conference in Glasgow, it was the skunk at the garden party, blocking efforts to phase out the fuel most responsible for global warming.

This soot-smeared intransigence, however, distracts from a dramatic countervailing trend. While his underlings defended coal, Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, made a series of pledges in Glasgow that, if kept, will make his country a green-energy powerhouse. The most eye-catching was the promise that India would achieve “net-zero” emissions of greenhouse gases (ghgs) by 2070—meaning that any emissions that had not been eliminated by then would be offset in some way.

Mr Modi underpinned that goal with two exacting targets for 2030: to slash emissions by a billion tonnes from their current trajectory and, to that end, to increase non-fossil power generation (which includes nuclear and hydro as well as wind and solar) more than three-fold, from roughly 150gw?to 500gw.

India is the world’s third-largest emitter of?ghgs. If it were to meet Mr Modi’s targets, it would not just revolutionise its own energy mix, but also provide a big boost to global efforts to curb global warming. What is more, Mr Modi has declared it a “national mission” to develop “green hydrogen”, a clean fuel made using renewables which could help decarbonise industries that remain stubborn polluters the world over. But just how plausible are these ambitions?

India’s entire generation capacity, both clean and dirty, is currently only 400gw. So Mr Modi wants to build a whole second grid’s-worth of green power in just eight years. To reach that goal, India will need to invest some $500bn in clean energy and improvements to the grid, according to an estimate by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (bnef), a research firm.?

Such a feat would not be unprecedented. China went from 44gw?of solar capacity to 300gw?in six years, and from 50gw?of wind to 330gw?in 11 years. But it was helped both by a huge manufacturing base in renewables and by an economy that excels at steering capital to favoured industries. Those are advantages that India lacks.

Renewable power is growing very fast in India. Solar generation capacity has increased 50-fold since 2012, to nearly 50gw?at the end of last year. In the first half of 2022 another 7.4gw?of solar was added. Indeed, when it comes to building new generating capacity, renewables have already supplanted coal. The capacity of new solar, wind and hydro plants constructed last year was nearly double that of new coal-fired plants (see chart 1).?

Even so, investment in renewables is not proceeding fast enough to meet Mr Modi’s targets. The 11gw?of renewable capacity added in 2021 is far less than the annual increment required. Nonetheless, there are good reasons to take India’s new green revolution seriously.

For one thing, reducing emissions is not India’s only motive for overhauling its energy system. Mr Modi also wants both to spur manufacturing and to trim the bill for imported fuel. “How long will we be dependent on others in the field of energy?” he asked during his address on Independence Day in mid-August. India spent more than 4% of?gdp?on imports of fossil fuels last year, a particularly vexing sum for a country with a persistent current-account deficit.

Greening India’s energy supply would also help reduce air pollution, a deadly scourge for many of its inhabitants. The World Health Organisation reckons that in 93% of the country, the level of air pollution is well above its guidelines. A study published in 2019 by the?Lancet, a British medical journal, found that more than 1m Indians die each year as a result of the foul air. The choking smog that blankets much of north India especially at this time of year is a perennial political liability for the government.

Best of all, a big shift to renewables could help cut the cost of power generation. India’s sunny climate and low labour costs make it one of the cheapest places in the world to produce solar power. In fact, an analysis by the International Energy Agency (iea), a watchdog-cum-think-tank for energy-consuming countries, concluded that, after stripping out the effects of government subsidies, only the United Arab Emirates could rival it (see chart 2). That means that solar plants are a cheaper option for new electricity generation in India than coal- or gas-fired power stations. Power from windmills in India, although not the cheapest in the world, is also less expensive than that generated by burning fossil fuels.

What is more, India’s government is coming up with all manner of inventive policies to incentivise investment in clean energy. One of the big obstacles to any overhaul of the power industry is the sorry state of the electricity-distribution companies (discoms). Many of these state-controlled entities are all but bankrupt, with collective debts of perhaps $73bn.

They do not look like the safest of counterparties for investors seeking to sell clean energy. So Mr Modi’s government has introduced a mechanism that in effect makes India’s federal government the financial backstop for new long-term contracts to provide renewable energy to the grid. It is also allowing solar and wind generators to bypass?discoms?completely to sell power directly to manufacturers of green hydrogen.

To overcome India’s ever-present problems of red tape and?nimbyism, officials are setting up clean-energy parks with connections to the grid and speedy processing of the necessary permits. The government also uses reverse auctions to maximise investments in renewables at the lowest possible cost: developers state the minimum price they would be prepared to accept for the power they generate, with the lowest bids winning. It has conducted similar auctions for “round-the-clock” green power, meaning renewables coupled with some form of energy storage, to get around the intermittency of wind and sunshine.

These policies are working. Investors including Adani Group, one of India’s biggest conglomerates, are rushing to a renewables park in Kutch, a sun-drenched and windswept region of the state of Gujarat, for instance. With a planned output of 30gw, it will be the world’s biggest combined wind and solar farm.

By the same token, India is likely to receive offers to build generation capacity in excess of 25gw?at its solar auctions this year. That is over ten times more than any other country (see chart 3). In August it held one of the world’s biggest auctions for grid-scale battery storage.?

Indeed, one of the strongest indications that India’s green ambitions are more than hot air is the enthusiasm of investors. Mukesh Ambani, the boss of Reliance Industries, another sprawling conglomerate, gushed in his latest message to shareholders, “We will have the world’s most affordable green energy within this decade, and these solutions will then be exported to other countries.”?

Mundra, a busy port in Kutch developed by Adani Group, encapsulates the shifting priorities of India’s industrialists. It is one of the world’s busiest coal-handling ports, serving two huge coal-fired power plants nearby. But it is also home to a new solar-panel factory, a pilot plant building 160-meter-tall onshore wind turbines (among the world’s largest) and new buildings where equipment to produce hydrogen will be made.

“We welcome you to a future powered by the SOLAR REVOLUTION” bellows a billboard. Adani is “indigenising the entire supply chain” for clean energy, explains Arun Kumar Sharma, a senior manager.?

Gautam Adani, the group’s founder and chairman (whose personal fortune of well over $100bn makes him one of the world’s richest people), claims his companies will spend $70bn on greenery in India by 2030. With nearly 5gw?of solar generation capacity as of mid-2021, Adani Green Energy, one of the group’s divisions, is already on par with Italy’s Enel Green as the world’s leading developer of solar energy.?

Not to be outdone, Mr Ambani plans to spend $80bn on clean energy in India. Reliance, like Adani Group, has made a mint from fossil fuels. But now it is developing a clean-energy cluster in Jamnagar, another port in Gujarat, which also houses the firm’s massive petrochemicals complex. Mr Ambani plans to build 20gw?of solar generation capacity by 2025, all of it to be consumed by his group for captive needs. “Once proven at scale,” he says, “we are prepared to double the investment.”

It is not just India’s behemoths that are embracing Mr Modi’s green vision; smaller companies are investing heavily, too. A firm called Greenko, for instance, is building the world’s biggest network of grid-scale energy storage using a technology called pumped hydro. It will use power from solar panels or windmills to pump water into elevated holding tanks. The water can then be released to turn turbines and generate power whenever electricity is needed. Mahesh Kolli, Greenko’s president, says it will spend $5bn by 2025 to construct 50gw?of storage capacity.

ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel, an Indian joint-venture between steel giants from Europe and Japan, has just signed a $600m deal for Greenko to provide round-the-clock clean power to one of its mills. It chose this option not simply because the power will be green, but because it was cheaper than building a coal-fired plant.?

In the longer run Mr Kolli sees his technology as the solution to the intermittency of power generated by windmills and solar panels. He wants to build a nationwide, grid-connected “energy-storage cloud”, akin to Amazon’s data cloud. When the wind drops or the weather clouds over in Gujarat, say, the firm’s pumped-hydro plants in Andhra Pradesh, to the south, could supply a compensating amount of clean power via the national grid to aluminium smelters in Odisha, to the east, run by Hindalco Industries, a big new customer. Unlike America, which has only limited connections between regional grids, India has a much better-integrated national grid, which makes such an idea feasible. The?iea?projects that it will have more pumped-hydro than any other country by 2026.

India is beginning to develop domestic supply-chains for clean energy. For example, Pune, a city in the state of Maharashtra which is already home to a cluster of car-part manufacturers, is becoming a clean-energy hub as well. Siddharth Mayur, a local and founder of?h2e?Power and homiHydrogen, has developed batteries for electric motor-scooters and auto-rickshaws that can be quickly swapped for fully charged ones when they run down. He is now making stacks, a component of fuel cells (which can be used to generate electricity from hydrogen), and is helping to foster local production of other parts. “By next year, 98% will be made within 60km of where we are sitting in Pune,” he says.?

The focus of a lot of the investment is green hydrogen, which, it is hoped, will allow big industries such as steelmaking and fertilisers to decarbonise. India produces almost none of it at the moment, although it does consume some 7m tonnes a year of ordinary hydrogen, made using fossil fuels. Investors think it will be a good place to make the green sort, since the process requires a lot of clean power, which India’s solar industry can provide cheaply. India also produces very little natural gas, so there are few lobbyists campaigning against the development of a rival industry. The government has promised to provide incentives to green-hydrogen firms in a detailed policy to be unveiled soon.

With help from Stiesdal, a European clean-technology firm, Reliance is building a large factory in Jamnagar to manufacture electrolysers. These devices, powered by clean electricity from Reliance’s planned solar farms, will then be used to manufacture green hydrogen. Mr Ambani asserts that these investments will make India the first country to produce green hydrogen for $1 a kilogram, within a decade. (The current cost is more than $4/kg.) He dismisses doubters, pointing to his recent success in delivering data to mobile telephones at the world’s lowest cost.

Indian Oil, a state-owned energy giant that is the country’s largest consumer of dirty hydrogen, announced in August that it, too, was entering the green hydrogen business. It plans to invest $25bn in that and other clean technologies by 2046, as part of an effort to reach net-zero emissions by that year. “We will make India a green hydrogen hub,” says S.M. Vaidya, the firm’s chairman.?

Foreign investors are also enthusiastic. John Cockerill, a Belgian technology firm, has established a joint-venture with Greenko to produce 2gw-worth of electrolysers a year. Ohmium, a buzzy American startup making electrolysers, has built its only factory in India. It hopes to reach an annual output of 2gw?by the end of this year. It recently dispatched to America the first Indian-made electrolysers ever to be exported, and expects to begin sending consignments to Spain soon as well.

Goldman Sachs, an American investment bank, has a stake in ReNew Power, a renewables firm which is working with Indian Oil on its green hydrogen plans. TotalEnergies, a giant French oil firm, has bought a quarter of a division of Adani Group that is developing green hydrogen.?

India’s green-hydrogen firms are even venturing abroad. Acme Cleantech Solutions, a solar-generation pioneer, has pivoted to making clean fuels.Together with Scatec, a Norwegian clean-energy firm, it is investing over $6bn to produce green ammonia (a derivative of green hydrogen) in Oman. The project is the first of its kind to be certified as carbon neutral. It also won commercial validation when Yara, a Norwegian fertiliser giant, agreed in July to negotiate a long-term contract to buy its green ammonia.

Rystad forecasts that India will be making more than 8gw?of electrolysers a year by 2025 (roughly half the planned output of Europe, the world leader). Sanford C. Bernstein, an investment bank, reckons the hydrogen market in India could be worth $15bn to $20bn a year by 2030. Although it is not quite as bullish as Mr Ambani, Bernstein reckons “under $2/kg seems achievable towards the end of the decade”.?

Much could still go wrong. For a start, India’s tycoons may not keep all their grand promises to lavish billions on the new green revolution. CreditSights, a research firm, has raised concerns about Adani Group’s high levels of debt. Especially with global interest rates rising, Indian conglomerates may struggle to finance vast investments in clean energy.

Even if the billionaires spend as lavishly as they have promised to, the lion’s share of the $500bn needed to meet Mr Modi’s targets will probably come from abroad. But foreign investors do not see India as risk-free. The rupee has depreciated steadily over the years, reducing outsiders’ returns. Mr Modi’s tendency to stoke sectarian tensions creates political risks. And foreign investors, too, may feel the pinch as interests rates rise and the world economy slows.

Yet India’s economy is growing faster than China’s. Demand for electricity is increasing fast enough that the country will need to build as much generating capacity by 2040 as the European Union currently possesses, whether green or not. The $30bn or so that?bnef?thinks India will need to invest in renewables each year to meet Mr Modi’s target, although a daunting sum by local standards, is only a tenth of the money put into wind and solar globally last year.?

It is early days for India’s second green revolution, but the first shots have already been fired. Mr Pandit observes that the West had a hundred-year head start in the conventional automotive industry. It has been a long, hard slog for Indian firms to catch up and compete. In many areas of clean technology, by contrast, India suffers no comparable disadvantage. As a result, he predicts, it will excel: “India will do for hydrogen what China did for batteries.”

Energy: How African Gas Could Wean Europe Off Putin's Supplies

The Telegraph (UK) reports that "the buried stash of weapons found last week in Mozambique appeared large enough to equip a small army of Islamist insurgents bent on causing havoc.

Hundreds of small arms ranging from assault rifles to rocket-propelled grenade launchers were unearthed with crates of ammunition and shells. Seizure of the weapons was the latest set-back for militants who last year held sway in much of the far north of the country, according to Rwandan peace-keeping troops who captured the cache.

The discovery denied the militants “the opportunity of returning and re-equipping themselves for further insurgent actions”, a statement said. Fighters linked to the feared Islamic State group shocked the energy world in March 2021, when they?stormed the town of Palma in Cabo Delgado province. The assault killed dozens and triggered a panicked evacuation of international companies who had been tapping the country's vast gas reserves.

Eighteen months later, huge liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects under construction by the French giant TotalEnergies and its US rival ExxonMobil remain on hold, waiting for better security before thousands of workers can return.

Mozambique's vast gas field has had energy giants excited since it was first discovered in 2010 and instantly catapulted the nation into the energy big league as countries raced to transition from coal to cleaner gas. Yet if Mozambique's reserves were attractive before, Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine and the resulting scramble for the West to?wean itself off Russian gas supplies has only made them more so.

“Mozambique is a major, major source of new natural gas,” says Paul Eardley-Taylor, director of oil and gas for Southern Africa, at Standard Bank. “There's a lot of it: around 150 trillion cubic feet, or 26bn barrels of oil equivalent. That puts Mozambique towards Qatar and America in terms of potential, helped by Russia-Ukraine. The location is great for global trade and the technical composition of the gas is good, it needs very little processing and has minimal CO2.

“If security challenges can continue their recent progress, then Mozambique should be able to produce gas until the cows come home.” Europe's hunger for gas to?replace Putin's supplies?has given new impetus to look afresh at countries with projects troubled by insecurity or poor management, industry insiders say.

The gas scramble has meant that after more than a year's hiatus, the questions of whether and when Mozambique can get the gas projects on stream, and whether troops like the Rwandans can provide safety, have become increasingly urgent in Europe.

Total is reported to be sending a delegation to check on security by the end of the year, while Mozambique’s finance minister, Max Tonela, has said he is “very optimistic” the French company would make a final decision on resumption by March 2023.

Mr Tonela has also this week said Mozambique expects to fill up the first tanker from a more secure offshore operation overseen by a consortium led by Italy’s Eni. “We hope that before the end of this month of October the first export of liquefied natural gas produced by the country will take place,” he said.

Meanwhile, European Union officials have confirmed the bloc is considering paying for?Rwandan troops to stay to secure the area. France, Germany and Italy are said to be leading the plan. “What you now have is the traditional advantages of gas – ability to supply power, industry, heating, maybe transport, now being accentuated by Russia invading Ukraine,” says Eardley-Taylor.

“The Euro nations essentially got themselves dependent on piped gas from Russia, and that strategic vulnerability has been exploited. “Europe is now buying LNG from America, they are buying from Qatar and they are also likely to buy from anybody else in the future, including Mozambique.”

The world's largest energy companies flocked to Mozambique as soon as huge gas reserves were found in the Rovuma Basin off the coast in early 2010. France’s Total, the US’s ExxonMobil, and Italy’s ENI all secured access, while the government boasted the revenue would transform the country.

Then, with work underway,?insurgency spread through northern Mozambique from 2017 onward. The insurgents' affiliations and ideology were obscure at first, but led by Bono Machude Omar, they later rallied to the flag of al-Shabaab and then, perhaps opportunistically, to Islamic State group.

Extremists found willing recruits among poor youths in a region long cut off from the southern centres of power and wealth. Mozambique at first dismissed their violence as banditry, but as atrocities such as beheadings grew, it became clear its amateurish military was unable to subdue the increasingly brutal threat. Maputo instead turned to Lionel Dyck, a former Rhodesian soldier, and his private security firm to provide air and military support under police command.

The alliance held back the insurgents for a time, but eventually they took the port of?Mocimboa da Praia, a key logistics hub for the gas industry, then Palma. The insurgents wrought terrible damage on each town. Total had been due to begin supplies in 2024, but instead exercised force majeure and fled its complex in the Afungi Peninsula, putting its $20bn (￡17.9bn) project on hold.

Since then, well-trained and equipped troops from Rwanda have deployed around the peninsula, reportedly at the request of Emmanuel Macron. The Southern Africa Development Community has added a regional force, including South Africans.

The big questions are whether security has improved enough for Total and the others, and how long it will last. Mocimboa da Praia and Palma are now relatively secure and there is a sense of stability, says Piers Pigou, senior consultant for southern Africa for the International Crisis Group.

However there are still attacks in other parts of the province and steady drips of smaller groups of insurgents into outlying areas and outposts. Overall the insurgency has cost 4,000 lives and forced around a million to flee their homes. Kidnappings, killing and rapes continue.

Gemfields Group announced on October 20 it had stopped operations at its Montepuez ruby mine around 300 miles south west of Palma after an attack was reported nearby. Mr Pigou said: “There is an ongoing level of insecurity and instability which hovers in the background when looking at longer term security concerns.”

Total itself is playing its cards close to its chest. “The resumption of works in Afungi site is conditional on the sustainable restoration of security in the north of Cabo Delgado and the normalisation of the situation vis-à-vis the local populations,” a spokeswoman tells The Telegraph. Officials say the “direction is very good” in Palma, but they want to see wider progress.

Analysts caution that even if Total and others do return soon, it will take some years before production can begin. Mozambique's supplies will not get Europe through the?immediate crisis this winter and America and the Middle East are more likely to be a reliable source of LNG for Europe in the medium term. However delays might also allow companies like Total to upgrade and future proof their projects. LNG from Mozambique could play a greater role toward the end of the decade.

Dr Steve Clark, an engineering post doctoral fellow at Stellenbosch University who has done extensive work on petrochemical projects in Mozambique, says: “The war in Ukraine has obviously changed the dynamic on whether it's a project to be looked at. But it's definitely not part of the medium term solution.”

Europe appears to be banking on the Rwandans being able to provide security. But for the project to work, they will need to secure not just the immediate site, but supply routes, transportation, and power coming from the wider province. “How much does insecurity in these areas affect their operations?” asks Mr Pigou. “How much insecurity can Total live with?”

Justice: In Madrid, the Prado Museum Takes Inventory Of Works Seized During The Spanish Civil War

Le Monde (France) reports that "there are some anonymous paintings here, as well as a magnificent portrait,?Cabeza de Mujer con Mantilla Blanca(1882), by the Valencian painter Joaquin Sorolla (1863-1923);?Winter Landscape?(1625) attributed to Brueghel the Younger (1564-1636); several?Allegories?by José Gutierrez de la Vega (1791-1865) from the end of the 19th?century; and an oil on wood by Joos de Momper (1564-1635), probably from the 16th?century.

A total of 25 paintings that were requisitioned during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) were unveiled by the Prado Museum on its website on September 20. To these looted works – whose original owners' names are not known or confirmed – new paintings were added over the following days, as the team led by expert Arturo Colorado (an art historian and author of several works on art in the civil war) made progress in the investigation that the Prado entrusted to them.

A month later, the first assessment of the ongoing inventory came out: 62 works kept by the museum came from temporary requisitions?conducted by the Republican government, in a desire to protect them from bombing (37 of them), and seizures made by Francisco Franco supporters (25) in retaliation against "enemies." This figure could, in time, grow even higher.

"The objective is to clarify any doubts that may exist about the background and context preceding the entry [of the works] into the Prado collections and, if necessary and in compliance with all legal requirements, to proceed with their return to their rightful owners," the museum explained in a statement. Mr. Colorado added, "There are thousands of works confiscated by Franco's regime that have never been returned to their owners, without Spain ever seeming to be aware of the problem. That's why the Prado's initiative is very important."

Until now, only the Museum of Fine Arts of Asturias had carried out a similar inventory, in 2015. It concluded that 101 of its works came from the Seizure and Protection of Artistic Treasures (JIPTA) set in motion by the Republican government in 1936.

Following the military uprising of July 1936, the Spanish government entrusted this organization with the task of collecting the most important works of art and valuable Spanish heritage assets. They were stored in official repositories – such as the basements of the Prado or the National Archaeological Museum or in churches and convents – in order to protect them from bombing and possible looting during the war. Each owner received a receipt and the provenance of the work was documented.

In addition to these official and supposedly temporary requisitions, there were also haphazard seizures made by organizations such as the National Confederation of Labor (CNT) and the Madrid Socialist Group, often from nobles and enemies of the Republic.

In total, thousands of works were sheltered in this way, according to Mr. Colorado, who managed to identify more than 17,000 but is convinced that there are "many more."?"There are also the 500 Prado masterpieces that were evacuated to Valencia, Barcelona and then to the north of Catalonia during the war, before being transported on 71 trucks to the League of Nations in Geneva, thanks to the intervention of an international aid committee in which France played an important role.

"These all came back in 1939," added this professor of art history at the Complutense University of Madrid and author of the 2021 book?Arte, Botín de Guerra?("Art: The Spoils of War").

As for the rest of the JIPTA's works, this was far from always being the case. After Franco's victory, the Service for the Protection of National Artistic Heritage (SDPAN) took over and returned only some, if any, of the works requisitioned by the JIPTA to their owners. Nearly 42% have not been returned, according to Mr. Colorado, who calculated that along the way, the regime appropriated at least 8,700 pieces of property.

It sent these to museums, entrusted them to executives and supporters of the regime, scattered them in churches and convents, hung them in ministries or donated them to the generalissimo's foundation. Others simply fell off the radar. In addition, there were the assets seized during the war by nationals and then – from 1940 onward and under the guise of the law against masonry and communism – from the "enemies" of the new Franco regime.

Of the 62 works listed by the Prado, 37 are from the JIPTA and 25 from the SDPAN. Two of them belong to the former Republican mayor of Madrid, Pedro Rico, who went into exile in France in 1937 and died in Aix-en-Provence 20 years later, never able to return to his country.

In recent years, his descendants had already recovered three more of the 23 paintings and two drawings from the temporary seizure carried out by the JIPTA – which the national side "failed" to return to them – in the Valencia Museum of Fine Arts and the Asturias Museum. They have not yet begun the legal restitution procedure.

To accelerate this process, the Spanish left-wing government – which has just passed a new democratic heritage law to advance the recognition of the victims of the civil war and the condemnation of the dictatorship – has invited all museums to make an inventory of their collections.

Minister of Culture Miquel Iceta said, "We want all works housed in museums to have a fully documented provenance. And, if there has been an unjust and illegal seizure due to the war or what happened afterward, we want to open a restitution procedure. We do not want to have public heritage assets that were obtained illegitimately."

This political will was demonstrated on September 2, when two paintings – which were seized by the Franco regime from the family of the industrialist and former Basque nationalist MP Ramón de la Sota y Llano – were returned to his heirs in a ceremony presided over by Minister of Tourism Reyes Maroto at the Bilbao Museum of Fine Arts.

The paintings,?Portrait of a Young Knight?(1623) by the Dutch painter Cornelis Van der Voort (1576-1624) and?Portrait of Maria Cristina de Borbon(1833) by the Canary Islands artist Luis de la Cruz y Rios (1776-1853), are housed at this museum.

In his case, the two paintings – which were part of a collection of 300 works seized in 1937 by the national camp's Court of Political Responsibility after the Battle of Bilbao – were on display on the walls of the Parador in the city of Almagro. This historic monument was turned into a hotel and is dependent on the Ministry of Tourism.

"We are repairing an injustice that lasted 85 years and we are demonstrating the government's priority to restore historical memory," said Minister Maroto."

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