Petro-Yuan Looms - How China Will Shake Up The Oil Futures Market

The "huge story",as Graticule's Adam Levinson called it, will, it appears, be a "wake up call" for the West that seems to happily be ignoring this potential bombshell that is China's looming launch of domestic oil futures trading.

Additionally, Levison warns Washington that besides serving as a hedging tool for Chinese companies, the contract will aid a broader Chinese government agenda of increasing the use of the yuan in trade settlement... and thus the acceleration of de-dollarization and the rise of the Petro-Yuan.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt we’re going to see use of the renminbi in reserves go up substantially”

China has been planning this for a number of years and given rising tensions, now seems like a good time for China to flex a little.

The Shanghai International Energy Exchange, a unit of Shanghai Futures Exchange, will be known by the acronym INE and will allow Chinese buyers to lock in oil prices and pay in local currency. Also, foreign traders will be allowed to invest -- a first for China’s commodities markets -- because the exchange is registered in Shanghai’s free trade zone. Even  Bloomberg admits there are implications for the U.S. dollar’s well-established role as the global currency of the oil market, as Sungwoo Park sums up some of the key questions...

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