http://www.theguardian.com/
Yeah, that's sanctions for you.
Remember
that a while back we started reading that Russia had inked two kinds of
monumental deals with the Saudis, namely, 6 nuclear power contracts and
a deal for sale of Iskander missiles.
This
really knocked my socks off at the time and I realized that the
speculation that the Saudis were aiming to break Russia by cheapening
oil was not quite holding water.
What I
suspect was happening at that time was that Russia and the Saudis had a
deal whereby the Saudis for their part would raise the price of oil to
Asia just enough to keep Russia competitive in China while keeping it
low in the West to discourage the fledgling fracking industry.
And
while the above linked article did not say that the Saudis have raised
their prices for Asia, a Chinese language article I am reading does
indeed say that Asian prices of Saudi oil are higher than Western ones, as reported here: http://finance.sina.com.
All
of the back room negotiations that led to this were no doubt an
indirect result of Western attempts to bring down Russia and Putin's
determination to turn the tables on the Western bullies.
The
tables were in fact turned for various reasons, including perhaps
secret negotiations between Putin and the Saudis but also certainly the
fact that Russia now accepts payment for oil in RMB (Chinese yuan). I
suspect that the Saudis are still holding to their old petrodollar
agreement with Nixon in 1973. At any rate, Russia sold a record amount
of oil to China as reported last June.
So
you may want to ask your favorite candidate in the current presidential
campaign whether he or she favors more sanctions against Russia and
whether sanctions work.
Now we know they do, but not the way they were intended to!
Yes,
folks, Russia had been working hard on ways to dedollarize world trade.
Now in this major step, they have accomplished this without making the
Saudis violate their petrodollar agreement. At least not yet.This is
really exciting to watch.
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