Why is petroleum only sold in dollars?

Naturally, this deal surprised the Arabs as it was quite attractive – the only thing they had to do was to refuse other foreign currencies and sell their oil for dollars. read more

In exchange they agreed to sell Petroleum to other countries in the world in exchange for dollars only. These also worked in their favo(u)r because dollar offered higher exchange rates. This kept the dollar afloat and promoted US as the global economy. read more

Back in the 1960s, Henry Kissinger, Former U.S Secretary of State, went to Saudi Arabia and embarked upon the Petro-Dollar Deal, as per which, US would give protection to Saudi from all other nations and Saudi would sell crude oil against only and only USD. read more

If the Gulf countries stopped pricing oil in dollars, they would also presumably stop pegging their currencies to the dollar, a more significant development. And of course Chinese officials have been making noise for several years about the need to move away from a dollar-dominated world. read more