GCC oil exporters stand behind dollar pricing

GCC oil exporters denied a report from the UK that they were negotiating with China, France, Japan and Russia to move away from pricing oil sales in the beleaguered US dollar.

Citing unnamed sources in Hong Kong and the Gulf, the London-based Independent newspaper reported that secret talks between several Gulf states and the four oil importers had resulted in a plan to price oil against a basket of currencies that included the Chinese yuan, the yen, the euro, gold and an eventually unified GCC currency.
“We have never heard of this or discussed this, not even secretly,” Abdullah al Attiyah, the Qatari oil minister who is also the country’s deputy prime minister, told Dow Jones.
“We did not discuss this at all,” said Dmitry Pankin, the Russian deputy finance minister, told reporters on the sidelines of an IMF conference in Istanbul.