Nations Deny Plot To End Oil Trade In Dollars

Several nations that trade oil in U.S. dollars denied a report last week that they are secretly transitioning to a different currency system in nine years. In response to the allegation, Saudi Arabia’s central bank chief Muhammad al-Jasser said, “Absolutely incorrect.”

 LONDON, England – Several nations that trade oil in U.S. dollars denied a report last week that they are secretly transitioning to a different currency system in nine years.

In response to the allegation, Saudi Arabia’s central bank chief Muhammad al-Jasser said, “Absolutely incorrect.”

“We did not discuss this at all,” replied Dmitry Pankin, Russia’s deputy finance minister.

“I don’t see a need for oil trade to be denominated differently,” added Karim Djoudi, Algeria’s finance minister.

The denials came after British journalist Robert Fisk reported in The Indpendent that among the nations also gearing up to replace the dollar are China, Japan, France, and Brazil.

The new currency system would be a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar,” according to Fisk.

Fisk said that the U.S. officials in the know “are sure to fight” this transition from the dollar; however, the problems still unresolved in the U.S. banking sector should slow their response.

“Chinese financial sources believe President Barack Obama is too busy fixing the US economy to concentrate on the extraordinary implications of the transition from the dollar in nine years’ time. The current deadline for the currency transition is 2018,” wrote Fisk.

Fisk ended his report with noting that nations have not been successful in transfering off the dollar as a reserve currency in the past.

“Iran announced late last month that its foreign currency reserves would henceforth be held in euros rather than dollars. Bankers remember, of course, what happened to the last Middle East oil producer to sell its oil in euros rather than dollars. A few months after Saddam Hussein trumpeted his decision, the Americans and British invaded Iraq,” he said.