Russian petroleum refining company Rosneft, one of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies, has ditched the US dollar for the Euro to avoid US sanctions.
Investigative journalist Ben Swann breaks it down.
Ben give us a summary of what Rosneft just did and why?
Essentially what Rosneft just did is that they decided that they were no longer going to accept the dollar as their currency of choice and they were looking to essentially sell oil using Euros and Rubles in order to get around US sanctions. I don’t think it is necessaily very suprising that this step has been taken by this comnay, specifically because we know that there have been efforts made in the past by other nations and other oil companies to try to move away from the petrodollar, we know that the US dollar is geting backed by oil which has been that wasy sonce 1973when the US and Saudi rabia made a deal for all oil to be sold in US dollars. So, we’ve seen this attept made in the past. This is a significant one, because Rosneft is really the largest company to take this step.
We know that the US sanctions on Rosneft stems from the doing business with Venezuela. Do you think that the US is using political means to shape global capitalism?
Well, yes, global capitalism and also just the global political landscape.The us has done this for many decades…where it attempts to influecne multinational corpotations and governments by saying we have santions here and therefore we can punish a country like Venezuela by not allowing Venezuela to sell its crude oil or to sell its oil exports. Well, we’ve seen this issue going on now for the past few months specifically with Rosneft and Venezuela becuse the US has already put sanctions on that oil, theynhave ut sanctions n that oil that is essentially, the least refined and messiest and they went after that. So the US has gone consistently after Venezuela and they are trying to prevent any kind of relationship between Venezuela and other nations or pribate companies in order to prevent the Venezuelans from getting a foothold because that is where the majority of their money comes from. The majority f the nation’s economy is based upon oil as you know, s this has gone on for sometime ans now what you see happening woth Rosneft is that they are saying, ‘here is a way we could get around US Sanctions.
Ben, you touched on this a moment ago, alot of businesses abroad have followed suit not onl Russia, but alot of companies are also ditching the dollar. Why do you think that is?
Well, there has been an intentional efforts that has been made by certain nations specifically BRICS nations, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Those five nations have made a concerted effort where they can, to move away from the US dollar, because they dont like the fact that US dollar is the world’s reserve currency and they certainly they don’t like the fact that the US dollar is used as a hammer when it comes to sanctions to punish contries and to control global outcomes. So the Chinese, Russians, Iraq, India, have attempted to do it. It is happening on multiple fronts simultaneously. I truly believe that this is probably one of the least talked about and yet one of the most important issues of our time. Certainly for Americans and for the next geeneration of Americans coming along must know that there are nations working very hard to dislodge the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency because of the way the US has used to to hammer nations in the past. And I think there will ultimately be a reckoning for having used the US dollar to batter other nations because eventually we are going to lose a world reserve currency status.
Does seem that we have kinda weaponised the US dollar
Absolutely.
Last thing here Ben, do you think it gets a little muddier specifically with Rosneft separating business from politics given that Rosneft is state-controlled?
I don’t know that it get specifically muddier, it plays into the reality that this ges beyind the action of one company. Itbcerttainly is the effort and intention of the Russian goovernment to weaken the US dollar as the reserve currency as it is the BRICS Nations. Those attemts have been made for sometime, so, yeah, muddies the water just a litle bit, but i think it is part of the course. So the story is , the US dollar is being sold to about 90 percent of the world, so it is not such a big story in this particular instance, but when you see it playing in multiple avenues, multiple fields across multiple nations, That’s when it makes a difference.
Transcibed from Youtube Video by KenyanBusinessFeed. Courtesy of RT(dot)com
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