Iran: We don’t want dollars

Posted on Tuesday 11 September 2007

From the United Press:

Faced with U.S. economic sanctions and a weak dollar, Tehran is demanding foreign energy companies do business in yen and euros, despite increasingly desperate need for investment.

In a deal announced last week, Japan’s Nippon Oil agreed to buy oil from Iran using yen instead of the traditional U.S. dollars. The agreement comes after years of Iranian efforts to shift its petroleum exports away from dollars and toward yen and euros.

[…]

The economic consequences of sanctions are not Iran’s only motivation. The declining value of the dollar has also made the euro and yen attractive, if not for sales, than at least for saving.

“There is also another key issue that you are seeing, not just in Iran, but in other oil producers, especially Gulf oil producers, is given the depreciation of the dollar, it is better to hold their reserves at least in euros, it is a better store of wealth. Some of the other Gulf producers will accept payment in euros. They won’t price their oil in euros or yen, and even if they are receiving payments in dollars, most likely they are converting a substantial share of that every month into other currency,” Kirsch said.

Here’s the full article.


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