Sunday, July 6, 2014

CEO of One of the "Supermajor" Oil Companies Sees No Need for the petroDollar

Of course being a supermajor ain't what it once was, what with the rise of the national oil companies and all.
In fact Total now ranks 12th in global production, barely ahead of Petrobras.
If you restrict yourself to publicly traded entities they rank eighth in revenue.
From ZeroHedge:
The USA is fast running out of friends to support its 'exorbitant privilege'. Having alienated the Germans over NSA-eavesdropping, 'boomerang'd the Russians into de-dollarization, tariffed and quantitatively eased China into diversification, and finally 'punished' France into discussing the dollar's demise; it appears no lessor person than the CEO of Total (the world's 13th biggest oil producer and Europe's 2nd largest), believes "There is no reason to pay for oil in dollars." Clearly, based on Christophe de Margerie's comments, that we have passed peak Petrodollar.

As Reuters reports,
Oil major Total's chief executive said on Saturday the euro should have a bigger role in international trade although it was not possible to do without the U.S. dollar.

Christophe de Margerie was responding to questions about calls by French policymakers to find ways at EU level to bolster the use of the euro in international business following a record U.S. fine for BNP. 
... 
"There is no reason to pay for oil in dollars," he said. He said the fact that oil prices are quoted in dollars per barrel did not mean that payments actually had to be made in that currency.
So even a major beneficiary of the status quo appears to see the end in sight for the Petrodollar....
...MORE

See also yesterday's "Signposts: South Korea and China Will No Longer Use the Dollar to Settle Bilateral Trade"