Oil for Yuan a "big, bad thing", says Republican senator

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In a segment on Fox News Sunday, US Republican Senator Ben Sasse commented on reports of Saudi Arabia pricing some of its oil in Chinese yuan instead of the US dollar, Sputnik reported.

"The Saudis pricing some of their [oil] commodity in Chinese currency, or signaling that that's where they're headed…is a big, bad thing", he said.

Saudi Arabia is in active negotiations with Beijing to price part of its oil supplies to China in Yuan, a move that would undermine the US dollar's domination of the global petroleum market and represent another turn by the world's top crude exporter toward Asia.

China purchases more than a quarter of Saudi Arabia's oil exports. Those sales, if priced in yuan, would raise the value of China's currency. The Saudis are also considering including yuan-denominated futures contracts, known as the petro-yuan, in the pricing model of Saudi Arabian Oil Co., known as Aramco.

Sasse called for the US to "constantly" rearm Ukraine, and stressed that "defeating Vladimir Putin" is the only way to prevent China from displacing the dollar.

The US dollar has been the global benchmark for oil sales ever since the US struck a deal with Saudi Arabia to standardize oil prices in the 1970s, creating the petrodollar. 80% of oil sales are currently denominated in US dollars.

Going too far

The US' efforts to isolate Russia's oil sales from the world market may have been a step too far for some countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Mexico, South Africa and India have all taken stances against the US' approach to the Ukraine crisis, either refusing to join Washington in sanctioning Russia, or condemning NATO's actions altogether.

India, the world's third-largest energy consumer, has acquired three million barrels of crude oil from Russia at a significant discount to the current Brent crude price.
 
According to sources, the Russian side offered a 27 to 30% reduction compared to international pricing.
 
Commodities monitoring and analytics firm Kpler revealed that India has acquired 360,000 barrels of oil per day from Russia so far in March, over four times the 2021 average.