In this guest blog post, Professor Anna Zalik of York University Canada explores how governments and multinationals criminalise protest and gloss over the environmental injustices of oil extraction.
Q: What does the Canadian Government’s fury at opponents of the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline have to do with the Nigerian ‘legaloil’ campaign?
A: Both positions are about justifying private profits and criminalizing protest. Continue reading
(this article initially appeared in Bankwatch Mail 50)
Bread, freedom, dignity, social justice. These were core demands articulated during the democratic and inspirational Egyptian revolution in Tahrir Square at the beginning of this year. Beyond this, there was widespread support for improved public services to the poor, a shift from subservience to US foreign policy, a reduction in Egypt’s foreign debt and an end to and reversal of privatisation policies.
Tahrir Square on Tuesday 22 November
Now, under the mantle of “supporting democracy”, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the European Investment Bank (EIB) are working with the military junta-appointed government – an increase in Egypt’s debt burden and the promotion of privatisation “as a necessity” both look inevitable.
The popular movement against a Canadian petrochemical plant has forced the Egyptian government to shut down the Agrium-Mopco gas-fertiliser factory, after residents shut down highways, bridges and a deepwater port, and battled the Egyptian military in the street.
Grainy photos and video-clips tweeted out – especially by Al-Jazeera’s @Mansourtalk – show locals standing up to military forces using live ammunition and tear gas. After 25 were arrested, fellow protestors besieged an army unit and APC until their friends were released. At least one local – Islam Abdullah – was killed by police or military and many others injured.
Twitter: Protestors besiege APC demanding release of their comrades @mansourtalk
Egyptian communities concerned about a proposed BP gas plant on the Mediterranean coast have organised protests, including a sit-in on the site, road blockades and a raid on BP’s local office, as reported by Egyptian paper Al-Masry Al-Youm.
The residents of Idku, east of Alexandria, are opposing plans to pump gas ashore from BP’s offshore drill rigs before processing it for onwards shipment. The military has already approved the project, but local campaigners are demanding that the Egyptian Environmental Agency. A 2002 report by the Agency concluded that such a project would be too damaging to the local fish, coral reefs, agricultural land and ecologically-rich area. Continue reading
Documents revealed by the FT amid concerns raised by Avaaz show that
Gulfsands Petroleum, the London-listed oil and gas company, agreed to give a share of profits from its production activities in Syria to a company controlled by Rami Makhlouf, the first cousin of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
The company has also paid more than $1m in fees to Ramak, the Makhlouf family’s holding company, for services connected with its operations in the country.
Facing increasing public attention over its close relationships with the Syrian regime, Gulfsands today released details of its payments and engagement with Rami Makhlouf. This includes the 5.7% Al-Mashrek shareholding in Gulfsands, rental fees for an office in Damascus, and payments under the Ramak Services Agreement.
Ramak was apparently hired to “provide advice and to assist in identifying, evaluating and pursuing E & P opportunities in Syria, including in connection with the successful public tender for Block 26″. This is interesting, as Ramak is a holding company known best for its duty free stores, not for its expertise in the oil industry. However, the company is known for winning public tenders in Syria. Ramak was added to the Treasury Department’s Blocked Persons List precisely because of Makhlouf’s use of “access to high-level Syrian Government insiders to enrich himself at the expense of the Syrian people”.
Gulfsands claims now to have suspended all payments to the Makhlouf interests after EU sanctions imposed in May 2011. This is possible, but begs the question of why the company claimed in July 2011 that “business as usual” continued in Syria, with no reference to a severance of relations with a key partner. Today’s public statement came only in the context of increased questions in the media, undermining Gulfsands’ claims to be acting responsibly.
Today’s news release also gives the impression that Gulfsands has been complying with both EU and US sanctions:
“Gulfsands notes that the US and EU have imposed a number of sanctions against Syria and various named individuals and organisations. Gulfsands is fully compliant with all applicable sanctions”
This is a clever dodge – note the use of the word “applicable”. US sanctions are not applicable to Gulfsands – because it moved its headquarters from Houston to London. This enabled the company to continue payments to Ramak until now.
Under pressure, Gulfsands has distanced itself a little from Rami Makhlouf. But the company is pressing ahead with its record extraction levels. PLATFORM’s calculations show that Gulfsands is paying the Syrian regime between $4.5 million and $8.4 million in revenue and oil – every week. This provides Assad’s dictatorship a key capital lifeline to continue its attacks on the uprising.
Propaganda tool?
London-based Gulfsands Petroleum is operating as a propaganda tool for the Assad regime. In an interview from last Wednesday, the company’s communications director Ken Judge made statements that
Yet the Syrian uprising is evidently supported by a broad swathe of the country. Scaremongering about “Islamic extremists” who “infiltrate” protests is an attempt to affirm the dictatorship’s distortion. (“Syrian govt claims Islamic extremists infiltrate rebel movement“)
Signing a 35-year contract in eight days is not evidence some much of efficiency, but of a dictatorship and corruption. Good practice involves publishing contracts and debating them within parliament and the public sphere, not making major economic decisions wi
th no public oversight, transparency or accountability.
This last is from an interview two weeks earlier.
Dodging sanctions?
Serious questions needs to be asked as to whether Gulfsands are currently ignoring EU sanctions. The company based on Cork Street near Piccadilly, has close ties to individuals and organisations under sanction. 5.8% of Gulfsands shares are held by Al-Mashrek Global Invest Ltd, a fund recognised as tied to public corruption in Syria and controlled by the Syrian tycoon Rami Makhlouf, a central figure in Assad’s regime and cousin of the president. These shares were issued in 2007 in a special deal to accelerate extraction in Syria.
Al-Mashrek has been subject to EU sanctions (an asset freeze and a travel ban) since June, with Rami Makhlouf also listed individually by the EU and the US.
Gulfsands also holds a “strategic partnership” signed with Rami’s main Syrian front company, Cham Holdings, described by Gulfsands as “one of Syria’s most important business groups.” Through Cham Holdings, Makhlouf has dominated the Syrian economy in recent years, taking advantage of no-bid tenders and his relationships with key ministers to become the richest man in the country. As a result, Rami Makhlouf himself is the top hate-figure in Syria alongside Bashar and Maher Assad, with protests (including this photograph) denouncing his role and attacks on Syriatel, owned by Cham.
When the Gulfsands-Cham deal was signed in 2007, Gulfsands Chairman Andrew West was excited about the benefits of being formally allied with Assad’s top business crony: “We are optimistic that, in partnership with Cham Holding, Gulfsands will be able to acquire direct and indirect interests in several potentially high-value energy projects which have already been identified in Syria and Iraq.”
Cham’s Chairman Nabil Kuzbari – now also under sanctions – added, “For some time now, we have enjoyed a close working relationship with Gulfsands’ management and directors”. The joint venture – created as an acquisition vehicle for energy assets – was widely recognised as providing Gulfsands with the”influence necessary to achieve its aims in the region.”
Despite the EU sanctions on Makhlouf and Al-Mashrek, Gulfsands continues “business as usual” in Syria and has offered no public statement explaining how it will end co-operation or payments to either.
This is unsurprising, as Gulfsands has a history of dodging sanctions. The company was itself once a Houston, USA, based oil company with American directors. When in 2008 the US Treasury Department designated Makhlouf as a person benefitting from corruption who “used Syrian intelligence officials to intimidate” and whose “close business associations with some Syrian cabinet ministers have enabled him to gain access to lucrative oil exploration”, Gulfsands chose to maintain its alliance with Makhlouf. With US imposed sanctions on companies and US citizens dealing with Makhlouf, the company upped sticks, moved to London and sacrificed both its CEO and CFO.
The company does not set out the potential impact of EU sanctions in its annual report published in April 2011. The “Principal Risks and Uncertainties” leaves the issue untouched, an irresponsible lack of rsik assessment towards its shareholders.
Oil companies, possibly including Gulfsands, have also raised the issue of demanding compensation for sanctions. This creates an economic disincentive to further sanctions on oil exports or sales.
Gambling on repression
In his interview, Kenneth Judge sees no issues with aligning his company with the regime. Beyond that, the company is seeking to profit from instability, from its preparedness to work with a dictatorship that tries to cling to power:
“We’re a little further on the front foot in looking for new business opportunities elsewhere in the MENA region. And we are working quite earnestly to try to take advantage of perhaps the nervousness of some companies, or the inability of some companies, to finance themselves in the Middle East at the moment.”
The company’s main political concern in its annual report is that a “host country seeking to expropriate assets or change the terms of existing contracts.” But Gulfsands directors feel this is covered as “In the case of Syria we have successfully developed such relationships through Mahdi Sajjad as a result of our longstanding presence in the country.”
Rami Makhlouf will have given the Gulfsands board further reassurance with his statement that
“We will sit here. We call it a fight until the end. [...] They should know when we suffer, we will not suffer alone.”
Drilling as usual
Ken Judge also stated
“Whilst security is maintained at these facilities, we will remain able to operate our business.”
This is relevant, as parts of Syria’s oil infrastructure have begun to be targeted by the popular uprising, as people have realised that the crude produced by Gulfsands and Shell is the lifeblood for Assad’s regime. Gulfsands is relying on the Syrian military – now responsible for over 1,500 killings in recent months – to keep people away from the oil fields and pipelines.
Judge is happy to boast that at this point of crisis, Gulfsands is drilling and pumping at record levels:
“Having just returned from Syria with my colleagues, as I was there all last week, we’ve continued our activities whether they are in Damascus or in the field in the north east, uninterrupted throughout this period that you’ve seen on television or in the press. Without interruption, without interference or any consequence to our production, which has reached record levels. So in recent days we’ve been setting record levels of production for the company, and we’re actively working on projects to expand that production up to 24,000 barrels a day, in the second half of this year.”
Twelve wells are to be drilled in 2011, bringing extraction up to 33,000 barrels per day by 2012.
Gulfsands’ operations are concentrated in BLock 26, in the far north-eastern corner of Syria. This is the predominantly Kurdish part of the country, where the local population has long been subject to discrimination and repression.
Today, a Shell-chartered tanker is scheduled to dock in the Syrian port of Tartous. The Heidmar TBN will collect almost 600,000 barrels of crude oil purchased by Shell. The shipment, worth over $55 million, has been marketed to Shell by state company Sytrol, an integral part of Assad’s regime of power.
Repression of the democratic uprising in Syria has seen the regime kill over 1,000 and imprison 10,000. Yet Shell, one of the largest foreign investors in Syria, continues its close co-operation with the Ba’ath regime – extracting oil, meeting with regime leaders, delivering crude to state refineries and purchasing crude exports.
PLATFORM is revealing Shell’s support for Assad’s dictatorship and the company’s reliance on his military & police apparatus. Highlights include:
* 17% of Syrian tanks – instrumental in the repression of the uprising – run on fuel derived from Shell crude.
* Continued revenues paid by Shell are helping bankroll Assad’s crackdown. PLATFORM estimates that 4-8 out of every 100 tanks used to repress opposition are financed through revenues from crude extracted by Shell and its partners.
* Democracy protests and strikes have spread across the oil-producing regions in the southeast and the oil export ports on the Mediterranean. Shell is only able to continue its operations in these regions because of the brutal state repression and extreme force used by military and paramilitary forces in crushing the popular uprising and placing the cities under siege.
PLATFORM Researcher Lorenzo Paluello said: “While the British and Syrian public believe that suppressing a mass democratic uprising with tanks is problematic, Shell continues to work hand in glove with the regime. The people of Syria are rising up for freedom, but this company has placed itself firmly on the side of corrupt dictators. While massacres take place on the streets, Shell relies on the regime’s violence to maintain the “stability” it desires. This is a stability which prioritises profits at the expense of freedom from torture and the right to life.”
The close relationship between Shell and the Syrian regime is clear from both Syrian government and Shell public statements:
* On April 29th 2011, Shell officials in Damascus were courted by Syrian Prime Minister Adel Safar, who “stressed government’s support for the work of Shell” and promised to continued “providing the necessary facilities [to] contribute to strengthening its [Shell's] role”. This was over a month into the uprising after hundreds of casualties and credible accounts of widespread torture. The regime was making sure to keep Shell, one of the largest foreign investors in Syria, close during the period of turmoil. Shell’s General Manager in Syria Graham Henley and Prime Minister Adel Safar reviewed activities and increased future co-operation and joint programmes.
* Shell’s Deputy General Manager in Syria has repeatedly praised the Syrian regime in terms that equate Assad’s regime with the Syrian people: “This success could not have been achieved without the strong partnerships that have been developed over the years between Shell and the Government of Syria. We believe that the relationship Shell has with the Government and the Syrian people is mutually beneficial.”
* Ongoing co-operation – since the uprising began – between Shell and the Syrian regime includes social programmes that “completes the work carried out by the Baath Vanguards Organization” - the youth wing of President Assad’s ruling Baath Party.
PLATFORM Campaigner Lorenzo Paluello said “While Cameron condemns Assad, he allows British corporate support for the brutal crackdown. By prioritising business interests and energy dominance over democracy and human rights,Britain’s foreign energy policy gives Shell and BP a green light to make deals with dictators and shut their eyes and ears to cries for freedom and democracy.
Shell should stop co-operation with the regime’s police and military forces while the brutal crackdown continues. If this means that Shall cannot continue its operations, that is the correct choice for any responsible actor.”
Graham Henley – General Manager of both Syria Shell and the Al-Furat Oil Company – has barely been in this job for a year. Before that he was responsible for Shell’s Gbaran-Ubie project in Nigeria in Bayelsa State.
NOTES
[1] The Heidmar TBN is scheduled to collect 80,000 tonnes or 586,639 barrels of crude on 29th May 2011. It was chartered by STASCO, the Shell Trading and Shipping Company.
The crude purchased by Shell could be a shipment of Syria Light or a sourer/heavier blend of Syrian crude. The latter is valued at a significant discount to Brent, hence our conservative estimate of the payment. If the Heidmar TBN is loading Syria Light, the value could be over $65 million.
http://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=ar…
[2] Syrian military vehicles run on fuel produced in Syria’s refineries at Homs and Baniyas, supplied with crude extracted in the east of Syria, near Deir Al-Zour.
As of January 2010, Syria’s refining capacity was around 240,000 barrels per day, according to the UE EIA. Shell contributes 55,000 barrels of high quality sweet Syria Light per day through the Al-Furat Oil Company. In addition, Syria imports around 95,000 barrels per day of gasoil/diesel.
[3] Based on Al-Furat exports of 45,000 barrels per day of Syria Light and 110,000 barrels per day of heavy/sour crudes by the Syrian Petroleum Company in 2008. Shell/Al-Furat extraction has remained at the same level since 2008, while wider Syrian extraction levels have fallen slightly, to 387,000 barrels per day. Oil revenues cover around a quarter of the Syrian budget, including military costs. Shell is the dominant foreign oil company. For the exact calculations contact PLATFORM.
Unrest has reached Oman, the usually “sedate” and “tranquil” Sultanate on the southeastern corner of the Arabian Peninsula. Inspired by uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Bahrain, Omani youth took to the streets to challenge government corruption, cronyism, unemployment and a lack of democracy. Protests spread across the desert country, with police firing bullets and teargas from helicopters, killing at least six demonstrators. Sultan Qaboos exercises absolute power over his kingdom, as he has for forty years since he deposed his father.
Political parties are banned, as is collective bargaining. Omani subjects can’t hold a public meeting without the government’s approval, or express criticism of the sultan in any form or medium. Publication of books is limited and the government restricts their importation and distribution.
This all adds up to a profitable business environment for Shell. The company was the first to drill in Oman in 1956 and exported its initial tanker load of 543,000 barrels of crude in 1967, only three years before Qaboos ibn Said overthrew his father Said ibn Taimur.
Today, Shell still dominates the oil scene in the sultanate. Although other companies including BP are extracting gas, 80% of Omani crude is extracted by PDO – Petroleum Development Oman. Royal Dutch Shell is the primary foreign shareholderin this joint venture, controlling a 34% stake alongside the government’s 60% holding. Shell staff fill key positions, including Managing Director Raoul Restucci and Exploration Director Martin Stäuble. The company takes around 200,000 barrels of crude per day – 5% of its global production – from a relatively risk free and highly profitably operation. Shell also played a key role in establishing, constructing and running Oman’s two LNG (liquefied natural gas) plants – Oman LNG and Qalhat LNG – near the coastal town of Sur that has seen repeated demonstrations.
Having worked closely with Sultan Qaboos’ regime for the past forty years, Shell has developed an ongoing symbiotic relationship with the despot. John Malcolm, the Managing Director of PDO and Shell most senior representative in the country until 2010, demonstrated his allegiance to the crown in an obsequious introduction to the company’s 2007annual report:
“I would like to give special thanks to Your Majesty for your unflagging support and wise guidance to PDO over the years. Looking forward, our challenge as a Company is to work hand-in-hand with Your Majesty’s Government to secure our capability to produce oil and gas for the next 40 years. [...]
As we move towards an ever more complex and challenging future, we know that we can count on Your Majesty’s continuing support and guidance. For our part, we reaffirm our commitment to securing the future of the Sultanate of Oman under the wise leadership of Your Majesty.”
Shell’s close partnership with the Omani government is part and parcel of Britain’s foreign energy policy towards the region. The Sultan long always been an anglophile, having attended school in Kent, trained as a British officer at Sandhurst and served in the British Army in Germany in 1960. Today, sports pavilions bear his name at both Sandhurst and the RAF officers’ college, Cranwell. But the military relationship went much deeper than educating a young Qaboos.
Back in 2001, Ken Silverstein described in Salon how “the British have played an extraordinary role in Oman ever since the coup. For more than a decade afterward, British officers commanded all branches of Oman’s armed forces and hundreds more were “on loan” to the sultanate. No one was more influential in Oman than Timothy Landon, an officer in the British Special Air Services who was a classmate of the sultan’s at Sandhurst, the British military academy. He counseled the sultan on the coup, helped put down a leftist insurrection soon afterward, and later served as the rough equivalent of Oman’s national security adviser.”
This military support is not a thing of the past. The foreign office boasts in an article titled “The UK & Oman: our relationship”, that “The UK has a very strong defence and security relationship with Oman. Nearly 100 British military personnel are on loan to the Omani Armed Forces – the second largest such group anywhere in the world.”
Such military support is integrated with British government efforts to boost the interests of “our companies”. Only last Saturday, as protests were beginning to sweep the country, Lord Stephen Green, UK trade and investment minister,accompanied a a high-profile British business delegation including oil corporation representatives to Muscat.
What do Omanis really think of the Sultan? Media reports claim that most of Qaboos’ subjects only have praise for the Sultan, reserving criticism for his ministers. But only weeks before Mubarak’s fall, analysts failed to detect how broad and deep opposition to his rule ran. And in the days prior to the Day of Rage in Libya, most reporting claimed that Gaddafi held the allegiance of most Libyans and that a widespread uprising was impossible. With Shell and the FCO both favouring stability and their long, “unique” relationship with the regime, they’re banking on the country remaining “sedate” and “tranquil”.
The millions on the streets of Cairo, Alexandria and Suez are furious at Mubarak for upholding his own interests and those of Western powers and foreign companies at the expense of the Egyptian people. For decades, British and American oil companies worked hand in glove with the Egyptian dictatorship, enjoying its “stability” (lack of democratic change), “security” (repression of dissent) and “favourable business environment” (neoliberal policies and restrictions on trade unions).
Since Egypt’s first oil field at Gemsa came into production in 1910, the country’s resources have been dominated by London-based corporations. Back in the early 20th century, Anglo-Egyptian Oilfields – a joint venture of present-day BP and Shell – was the major operator in the country. A century later, vast chunks of the Gulf of Suez, Western Desert and Nile Delta remain long-term concessions granted to the same two companies, plus Reading-based BG.
BP is particularly proud of its “strong relationships with the Egyptian government”, boasting that it is the single largest foreign investor in the country and responsible for almost half of Egypt’s entire oil production, easily overshadowing all competitors. Describing itself as a significant part of the Egyptian oil industry for more than 45 years, the company witnessed Hosni Mubarak’s rise to power as Head of the Air Force and then Vice-President under Anwar Sadat, before he gained complete control in 1982. BP continued to extract crude and underwrite repression throughout more than four decades of Emergency Law, investing over $17 billion in oil rigs and pipelines. Billions of dollars in revenue payments enabled Mubarak to build up and arm both his civil and paramilitary police forces and the army.
In exchange, the regime ensured that its Western corporate allies profited handsomely over the years. Privatisation and reduced state involvement in the economy during the 1990s pleased the IMF, made billions for Mubarak’s associates and increased incentives to Western oil companies. Exploration and production concessions were made yet more profitable, with increased cost recovery allowances, larger blocks and longer license periods.
In parallel, harsh restrictions on freedom of expression, social movements and civil society reduced space for Egyptians to raise environmental concerns. In this context, BP has continued to drill new wells in the coral-rich but threatened Red Sea, including in its North Shadwan concession near the SS Thistlegorm, a British armed Merchant Navy ship sunk in 1940. Expanded oil extraction in these waters threatens the Egyptian tourist industry in Hurghada and the Sinai, especially after a major oil spill in June 2010. The Ministry of Petroleum, praised by BP, attempted to cover up the leak by claiming it was caused by a passing tanker discharging ballast.
With such limited environmental oversight, BP has been eager to drive ahead with new prospects, “drilling to reach reservoir technical limits”. The company aims to create “a new profit centre” in the Nile Delta offshore region by introducing its deepwater ‘expertise’ from the Gulf of Mexico.
By investing $1 billion a year into the country and making Egypt one of its 14 global Strategic Performance Units, BP emphasized the faith it places in its relationship with Mubarak’s government. Hesham Mekawi, Chairman of BP Egypt, has lauded “the stability of the country”, insisting that British oil investors will have a sustainable business in Egypt for years to come. When the regime felt threatened only months ago by a potential US Congress resolution demanding that Mubarak “hold fair elections, allow international monitoring of elections, and respect democracy and human rights”, BP allowed the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, in which it is one of the primary players, to lobby hard andsuccessfully to scupper the debate in Congress.
The company that brands itself with green images of sustainability and responsibility has taken a simple approach to CSR in Egypt: Providing a handful of scholarships to Cambridge each year alongside continued support for the dictatorship.
So now that we’re witnessing a vast popular uprising across Egypt, has BP ended its allegiance and support for the dictatorship? The company’s website carries no comment on the democratic protests or the regime’s attempts at repression, referring only to “the ongoing unrest in Egypt” and evacuation plans. Meanwhile, drilling and extraction operations continue unabated, with most oil facilities located out of reach of normal street protests. BP is assuming that Egypt’s strong army will guarantee the security integrity its assets, and continues to pay revenues to and underwrite a regime now widely accepted as illegitimate.
Demands from the democracy activists sweeping Egypt include “Putting on trial all those responsible for the policies of impoverishment and torture”. Will BP Egypt Chairman Hesham Mekawi and BP ex-CEO Tony Hayward answer for their part in enabling and supporting Mubarak’s repression? Or will the company’s faith in strongman politics be rewarded with Mubarak’s survival or relative continuity through a military takeover?
British oil interests are tightly interlinked with our governments’ recent political and military support for Gaddafi’s regime. Libya’s oil reserves – the largest in Africa – long had Western companies drooling. Shell beat its competitors to the chase, signing a $1 billion gas contract in 2004 during Tony Blair’s first visit to Libya. After three further years of pressure, BP secured a deepwater block the size of Belgium.
Tony Blair & Mu’ammer Gaddafi
Both deals relied on government support. Shell drafted letters Tony Blair sent to Gaddafi, while BP ensured that a Prisoner Transfer Agreement was signed. The Embassy in Tripoli lobbied and Prince Andrew was dispatched to charm.Confidential FCO documents reveal up to 26 high-level meetings with Shell about Libya.
The potential profits are enormous, with Libya largely unexplored, close to Europe, and in BP’s words “one of the safest places.” Safe, perhaps because of the repression and silencing of journalists? On Monday, BP stressed that offshore operations would continue, despite reports of massacres.
Both Labour and the Tories have foreign energy policies that prioritise British corporate control over oil reserves, enabling close partnerships with dictatorships in Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Oman, Jordan and UAE.
Yesterday, standing in Tahrir Square, Cameron preached about democracy. Then he met the same generals that commanded Egypt throughout Mubarak’s rule, and urged them to co-opt opposition. These generals are BP’s allies, offering the stability the company wants. Until we see a re-orientation of foreign energy policy away from supporting repressive regimes that let us control their oil reserves, our government will stand on the wrong side of justice and freedom in the Arab world.
David Cameron and Ahmed Shafik – one of longtime leaders of Egyptian military regime, now Prime Minister