At the Davos forum in January 2023, Mohammed Al-Jadaan, Saudi Arabia’s finance minister, made a high-profile statement about opening up the sale of Saudi oil in currencies other than the US dollar. This announcement breaks a pact with the country’s historic ally, the US: since 1974, in exchange for US military and political protection, the Saudis have linked their currency, the riyal, to the US dollar, accepting the latter as the sole currency for selling their oil. The other oil countries followed suit, similarly adopting the use of the US dollar for their transactions.
In 2000, only two countries were trying to escape the petrodollar:[1] Venezuela and Iraq. Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela had set up a system for exchanging oil for goods and services with other Central American countries. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, then under trade regulation imposed by the United Nations Security Council Sanctions Committee, had asked the Committee for permission (which was granted) to receive payment for its oil exports in euros. This was the case until the US intervention in Iraq in March 2003, which immediately put an end to the “euroisation”
