Petrodollar
Encyclopedia
A petrodollar is a United States dollar
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....

 earned by a country through the sale of petroleum. The term was coined by Ibrahim Oweiss
Ibrahim Oweiss
Dr. Ibrahim Oweiss is an Egyptian-born American economist, international economic advisor, and professor of economics at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, United States.-Early life and education:Dr...

, a professor of economics at Georgetown University
Georgetown University
Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...

, in 1973. Oweiss felt there was a need for a word to describe the situation then occurring in oil producing, OPEC
OPEC
OPEC is an intergovernmental organization of twelve developing countries made up of Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. OPEC has maintained its headquarters in Vienna since 1965, and hosts regular meetings...

 countries which were earning large amounts of money, in dollars, from oil production.

The term should not be confused with petrocurrency
Petrocurrency
Petrocurrency is a portmanteau neologism used with three distinct meanings, though often confused:#Trading surpluses of oil producing nations, originally called petrodollars...

which refers to the currencies of petroleum exporting nations. However Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

's currency, the Canadian dollar
Canadian dollar
The Canadian dollar is the currency of Canada. As of 2007, the Canadian dollar is the 7th most traded currency in the world. It is abbreviated with the dollar sign $, or C$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies...

, is sometimes referred to as a petrodollar in this context, as Canada is the largest oil net exporter to use the term "dollar" for its currency.

See also

  • Petro
    Petro
    Petro is the name of a supranational currency proposed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at the second South America-Arab League Summit in Qatar in 2009, to face the instability that the generation of fiat currency has caused the world economy....

  • Petrocurrency
    Petrocurrency
    Petrocurrency is a portmanteau neologism used with three distinct meanings, though often confused:#Trading surpluses of oil producing nations, originally called petrodollars...

  • Petrodollar recycling
    Petrodollar recycling
    Petrodollar recycling refers to the phenomenon of major oil-producing states mainly from OPEC earning more money from the export of oil than they could usefully invest in their own economies...

  • Petrodollar warfare
    Petrodollar warfare
    The phrase petrodollar warfare refers to a hypothesis that one of the unknown, driving forces of United States foreign policy over recent decades has been the status of the United States dollar as the world's dominant reserve currency and as the currency in which oil is priced. The term was coined...

  • Petrobourse
  • Petroeuro
  • Petroruble
  • Monetary hegemony
    Monetary hegemony
    Monetary hegemony is an economic and political phenomenon in which a single state has decisive influence over the functions of the international monetary system...


Further reading

  1. The hidden hand of American hegemony : petrodollar recycling and international markets / David E. Spiro. Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, 1999. xiv, 177 p. ; 25 cm. LOC call
  2. “The Choice of Currency for the Denomination of the Oil Bill," Speech given by Javad Yarjani, Head of OPEC's Petroleum Market Analysis Dept, on The International Role of the Euro (Invited by the Spanish Minister of Economic Affairs during Spain's Presidency of the EU) (April 14, 2002, Oviedo, Spain) http://www.opec.org/NewsInfo/Speeches/sp2002/spAraqueSpainApr14.htm
  3. “Russia shifts to euro as foreign currency reserves soar,” AFP, June 9, 2003 http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/7214-3.cfm

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK