Petrodollar Armageddon Approaches as One of the World’s Largest Oil & Gas Companies Dumps Greenback from Sputnik News
The US dollar currently enjoys the coveted status of the world’s de-facto reserve currency, with all oil purchased from the powerful cartel known as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) priced in greenbacks. However, some countries have recently attempted to challenge this state of affairs.
Russian energy giant Rosneft, the world’s eighth largest oil and gas company by total revenue, and the largest in terms of production volume and reserves, has completed the switch away from the dollar in favour of euros in export contracts, company CEO Igor Sechin has announced, speaking to participants at the Eurasian Economic Forum in Verona, Italy this week.
“We haven’t just started this work, but already competed it. All of our export contracts are already being implemented in euros and the potential for working with the European currency is very high,” Sechin said, The energy giant’s decision was “a forced measure in order to limit the company from the impact of the US sanctions,” the official explained.
Sechin also commented directly on the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency, saying he believed China had the potential to challenge the dollar in the near future.
“I think that the yuan will have the best chances of being used as a reserve currency due to the growth of the Chinese economy,” he said. According to the official, although the dollar is being used in over 60 percent of global trade today, including a whopping 90 percent of trade in oil and oil products, this picture will change over the next decade.
Russia, China & India to set up alternative to SWIFT payment system to connect 3 billion people from RT
Members of the BRICS trade bloc Russia, India, and China have decided to connect their financial messaging systems to bypass the SWIFT international money transfer network.
Russia’s financial messaging system SPFS will be linked with the Chinese cross-border interbank payment system CIPS. While India does not have a domestic financial messaging system yet, it plans to combine the Central Bank of Russia’s platform with a domestic service that is in development.
The new system is expected to work as a “gateway” model when messages on payments are transcoded in accordance with a certain financial system.
According to Izvestia, the parties involved will work on a single platform, without experiencing any difficulties with transactions.
Russia began development of SPFS in 2014 amid Washington’s threats to disconnect the country from SWIFT. The first transaction on the SPFS network involving a non-bank enterprise was made in December 2017.
“We have an opportunity to connect both foreign banks and foreign legal entities to the SPFS. Today, about 400 users are participating in the system. Agreements have already been concluded with eight foreign banks and 34 legal entities,” Alla Bakina, the director of the Bank of Russia’s national payment system, was cited as saying by Vesti.
Bakina explained that traffic through the system has been growing and currently accounts for around 15 percent of all internal traffic, up from 10-11 percent last year.
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