Econintersect: China has started to trade oil using currencies other than the U.S. dollar, according to an article at Examiner.com. According to Examiner.com Russia and China have agreed to conduct all sales from Russia without using the dollar. For obvious reasons the transactions between Iran and China will not use the dollar. Those two countries alone would remove 25% of China’s oil trade away from the dollar. If Venzuela were to follow nearly 40% of China’s oil trade would be non-dollar.
This is not the first mention of trading for oil in currency other than the dollar. In early 2011 GEI News reported that India and Iran were discussing using gold as the medium of exchange.
China is one of the reasons that the economic sanctions of the west against Iran are not fully effective. China, the world’s third largest oil importer, gets 16% of its oil from Iran. But they are doing so under an exemption from the embargo, as are India and more than a dozen other countries. However, according to Reuters, the sanctions are still partially effective, slashing Iran’s oil exports from about 2.4 million barrels in 2011 a day to approximately 1 million this year.
Sources:
- Dollar no longer primary oil currency as China begins to sell oil using Yuan (Kenneth Schortgen Jr, Examiner.com, 12 September 2012)
- U.S. says sanctions slash Iran’s oil exports (Jonathan Spicer, Reuters, 13 September 2012).
- America to the World: Stop Buying Iranian Oil or be Cut Off. Except for you, you, you… (GEI News, 21 March 2012)
- Possible Relationship – Iran:India, Oil:Gold (GEI News, 11 January 2011)