Alliances
Posted on 03/15/2022 8:11:48 AM PDT by shadowlands1960
Talks between Riyadh and Beijing have accelerated as the Saudi unhappiness grows with Washington
(Rest behind paywall)
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
This is because Biden is working to strengthen Iran.
Let’s Go Brandon
WTG, Brandon. Destroy the US Dollar by showering trillions of “free” money on us.
THAT out to do it!! Totally DE VALUE the dollar and then it’s all over!!
The article can be summed up as a giant middle finger to Brandon from the House of Saud.
The rest of the article, with my highlights:
Saudi Arabia is in active talks with Beijing to price its some of its oil sales to China in yuan, people familiar with the matter said, a move that would dent the U.S. dollar’s dominance of the global petroleum market and mark another shift by the world’s top crude exporter toward Asia.The talks with China over yuan-priced oil contracts have been off and on for six years but have accelerated this year as the Saudis have grown increasingly unhappy with decades-old U.S. security commitments to defend the kingdom, the people said.
The Saudis are angry over the U.S.’s lack of support for their intervention in the Yemen civil war, and over the Biden administration’s attempt to strike a deal with Iran over its nuclear program. Saudi officials have said they were shocked by the precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last year.
China buys more than 25% of the oil that Saudi Arabia exports. If priced in yuan, those sales would boost the standing of China’s currency.
It would be a profound shift for Saudi Arabia to price even some of its roughly 6.2 million barrels of day of crude exports in anything other than dollars. The majority of global oil sales—around 80%—are done in dollars, and the Saudis have traded oil exclusively in dollars since 1974, in a deal with the Nixon administration that included security guarantees for the kingdom.
China introduced yuan-priced oil contracts in 2018 as part of its efforts to make its currency tradable across the world, but they haven’t made a dent in the dollar’s dominance of the oil market. For China, using dollars has become a hazard highlighted by U.S. sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program and on Russia in response to the Ukraine invasion.
China has stepped up its courtship of the Saudi kingdom. In recent years, China has helped Saudi Arabia build its own ballistic missiles, consulted on a nuclear program and begun investing in Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s pet projects, such as Neom, a futuristic new city.
Meanwhile the Saudi relationship with the U.S. has deteriorated under President Biden, who said in the 2020 campaign that the kingdom should be a “pariah” for the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Prince Mohammed, who U.S. intelligence authorities say ordered Mr. Khashoggi’s killing, refused to sit in on a call between Mr. Biden and the Saudi ruler, King Salman, last month.
It also comes as the U.S. economic relationship with the Saudis is diminishing. The U.S. is now among the top oil producers in the world. It once imported 2 million barrels of Saudi crude a day in the early 1990s but those numbers have fallen to less than 500,000 barrels a day in December 2021, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
By contrast, China’s oil imports have swelled over the last three decades, in line with its expanding economy. , according to data from China’s General Administration of Customs.
“The dynamics have dramatically changed. The U.S. relationship with the Saudis has changed, China is the world’s biggest crude importer and they are offering many lucrative incentives to the kingdom,” said a Saudi official familiar with the talks.
“China has been offering everything you could possibly imagine to the kingdom,” the official said.
A senior U.S. official called the idea of the Saudis selling oil to China in yuan “highly volatile and aggressive” and “not very likely.” The official said the Saudis had floated the idea in the past when there was tension between Washington and Riyadh.
It is possible the Saudis could back off. Switching millions of barrels of oil trades from dollars to yuan every day could rattle the Saudi economy, which has a currency, the riyal, pegged to the dollar. Prince Mohammed’s aides have been warning him of unpredictable economic damage if he moves ahead with the plan hastily.
Doing more sales in yuan would more closely connect Saudi Arabia to China’s currency, which hasn’t caught on with international investors because of the tight controls Beijing keeps on it. Contracting oil sales in a less stable currency could also undermine the Saudi government’s fiscal outlook.
The impact on the Saudi economy would likely depend on the quantity of oil sales involved and the price of oil. Some economists said moving away from dollar-denominated oil sales would diversify the kingdom’s revenue base and could eventually lead it to repeg the riyal to a basket of currencies, similar to Kuwait’s dinar.
“If it is (done) now at a time of strong oil prices, it would not be seen negatively. It would be more seen as deepening ties with China,” said Monica Malik, chief economist at Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank.
The Saudis still plan to do most oil transactions in dollars, the people familiar with their talks say. But the move could tempt other producers to price their Chinese exports in yuan as well. China’s other big sources of oil are Russia, Angola and Iraq.
The Saudi move could chip away at the supremacy of the U.S. dollar in the international financial system, which Washington has relied on for decades to print Treasury bills it uses to finance its budget deficit.
“The oil market, and by extension the entire global commodities market, is the insurance policy of the status of the dollar as reserve currency,” said economist Gal Luft, co-director of the Washington-based Institute for the Analysis of Global Security who co-wrote a book about de-dollarization. “If that block is taken out of the wall, the wall will begin to collapse.”
Apparently Saudi Arabia, like the EAU is so upset with Biden appeasing Islamic Republic Mullahcracy.
Thanks for posting this. It is true that Riyadh has been threatening this for a number of years.
“This is because Biden is working to strengthen Iran.”
Bingo. Same reason the Saudis aren’t taking Dementia Joe’s calls. Quite understandably they are unhappy about the insane Obama/Biden-Iran deal
That will have consequences that Biden will have find a excuse for. Ukraine has already blown up, so what’s next. Make Israel the goat is my guess.
Huge huge huge.
SA can go esad.
As long predicted - you would have to be blind, senile, and/or hate America to push things this direction...
Thanks.
Article was written by Summer Said and Stephen Kalin for WSJ.
This is HUGE...
Destroy the Petro-Dollar and you destroy this country.
Nixon took us off the gold standard and we had high inflation, so Henry Kissinger negotiated with the Arab countries to establish the Petro-Dollar in exchange for our military protection.
Carter did not back it up, causing the Sha of Iran to be removed and the Iranian revolution. This in turn caused a weakness in the Petro-Dollar and we faced Carter’s inflation until Reagan re-established our power.
Sadam Hussein was selling oil in Euro’s and Yuan, thus the reason we invaded Iraq was to protect the Petro-Dollar.
This time I think we are toast.
The problem for the Saudi’s is that the Dollar is backed by the Full Faith and Credit of the United States.
Even after Obama and Biden, that is still worth a lot more than the full faith and Credit of the Chinese Communist Party...
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