Chavez May Price Oil Exports In Euros
Chavez May Price Oil Exports In Euros
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/finan...e_down&chan=db
MAY. 16 7:09 P.M. ET Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez said Tuesday that he would consider pricing his country's oil in euros instead of dollars in line with a similar declaration made by Iran.
Earlier this month Iran's state television reported the country's Oil Ministry granted a license for its first euro-denominated market.
"That is an interesting proposal made by the president of Iran," Chavez told Britain's Channel 4 news. "We are free to choose too between the dollar and the euro."
If the market were to succeed -- or if Iran simply demanded payment for its oil in euros -- commodities experts said it could lead central bankers around the world to convert some dollar reserves into euros, possibly causing a decline in the dollar's value.
Oil is currently denominated in dollars around the globe, whether through direct sales between producers and consumers or in trades made on markets in New York and London, but Chavez said that he would be willing to seek an alternative.
"So what the president of Iran says is recognizing the power of Europe. They have succeeded in integrating and have a single currency competing with the dollar, and Venezuela might also consider that," said Chavez, president of the world's fifth largest oil exporter.
Iranian legislators earlier this year urged the government to set up the market to reduce the United States' influence over the Islamic republic's economy.
First floated in 2004 when reformist president Mohammad Khatami was in power, the idea of a euros-traded oil bourse gained new life after the stridently nationalist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president last summer.
