Iran completely stops selling oil in U.S. dollars
TEHRAN, Dec. 8 (Xinhua) -- Iran, the world's fourth largest oil exporter, has completely stopped selling its oil in U.S. dollars, the ISNA news agency reported on Saturday.
"In line with the policy of selling crude oil in non-dollar currencies, currently selling our country's oil in U.S. dollars has been completely stopped," Iran's Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari was quoted as saying.
"The dollar is an unreliable currency in regards to its devaluation and the loss oil exporters have endured from this trend," he added.
"This is why Iran proposed to OPEC members that a currency (for selling oil) would be determined that would be reliable and would not cause any loss to exporter countries," Nozari said. He was referring to the November summit of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in Saudi Arabia in which Iran proposed that it is necessary to replace the U.S. dollar with other major hard currencies in oil trading.
Over the past months, Iran has massively reduced its dependence on the U.S. dollar in a bid to counter the United States' pressures on its financial system over Tehran's disputed nuclear program.
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