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The Countries Suffering Most From Low Oil Prices

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The Countries Suffering Most From Low Oil Prices

As Warren Buffet says, “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.”

And in 2014, when oil prices crashed and burned, the tide was gone – and it was shown that too many countries were relying on frothy oil revenues to balance out their trade deficits.

A Lingering Crisis

Fast forward to today, and low oil prices are still causing big problems for many countries. The above interactive visualization from the Council of Foreign Relations shows how the world economies most reliant on oil exports have fared since the 2014 crash.

The end results are not pretty – and even in 2016, there were 18 economies that had breakeven prices (based on spending on imports) that were above the average oil price for the year:

Country2016 Breakeven Price (Based on Imports)Difference from Avg. Oil Price
Libya$134.10-$91.29
Turkmenistan$132.00-$89.19
Colombia$102.30-$59.49
Algeria$101.10-$58.29
Bahrain$92.30-$49.49
Oman$86.80-$43.99
Chad$86.20-$43.39
Qatar$67.00-$24.19
Kazakhstan$64.10-$21.29
Gabon$60.50-$17.69
Trinidad & Tobago$60.20-$17.39
Brunei$58.50-$15.69
Venezuela$54.40-$11.59
Iraq$51.90-$9.09
Saudi Arabia$51.80-$8.99
Azerbaijan$50.90-$8.09
Angola$50.30-$7.49
Nigeria$43.50-$0.69

The oil price crash made many oil-reliant economies more fragile, and this fragility can be triggered in different ways. One interesting case study is Venezuela, which is currently embroiled in an ongoing economic, currency, and humanitarian crisis.

Bad Timing for Maduro

During the Hugo Chávez era, sky-high oil prices enabled fiscal and trade policies that subsidized Venezuelan life in many ways. That all changed in 2014, which was only one year after Nicolás Maduro took office.

Despite having largely the same policies as his predecessor, low oil prices have hammered the Venezuelan economy. Even with today’s prices, oil generates an estimated 95% of export revenues for the country. This has resulted in a disaster for the socialist nation, and Venezuela is now stuck with shortages in essential goods, crushing unemployment, a contracting economy, skyrocketing crime and murder rates, and even widespread malnutrition.

At the root of much of this, arguably, is an uncontrollable cycle of hyperinflation:

Venezuelan hyperinflation of the bolivar

With an economy that is a runaway train, the government prints more and more cash to try to maintain the status quo. This almost never works, and last year it even led us to publish a chart comparing Venezuelan hyperinflation with that of Weimar Germany.

According to DolarToday.com, a website that tracks the black market rate for Venezuelan currency, it takes 8,470 bolívars to buy US$1 today. Right before the oil crash this was closer to 65 bolívars.

A Lost Cause

While many oil dependent nations are working to diversify or ride out low oil prices in other ways, it seems unlikely that the crisis in Venezuela will be reversed anytime soon.

Here’s the full fiscal breakeven needed by OPEC producers, including Venezuela, to help normalize things:

Fiscal Breakeven

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De-Dollarization: Countries Seeking Alternatives to the U.S. Dollar

The U.S. dollar is the dominant currency in the global financial system, but some countries are following the trend of de-dollarization.

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De-Dollarization: More Countries Seek Alternatives to the U.S. Dollar

De-Dollarization: Countries Seeking Alternatives to U.S. Dollar

This was originally posted on Elements. Sign up to the free mailing list to get beautiful visualizations on natural resource megatrends in your email every week.

The U.S. dollar has dominated global trade and capital flows over many decades.

However, many nations are looking for alternatives to the greenback to reduce their dependence on the United States.

This graphic catalogs the rise of the U.S. dollar as the dominant international reserve currency, and the recent efforts by various nations to de-dollarize and reduce their dependence on the U.S. financial system.

The Dollar Dominance

The United States became, almost overnight, the leading financial power after World War I. The country entered the war only in 1917 and emerged far stronger than its European counterparts.

As a result, the dollar began to displace the pound sterling as the international reserve currency and the U.S. also became a significant recipient of wartime gold inflows.

The dollar then gained a greater role in 1944, when 44 countries signed the Bretton Woods Agreement, creating a collective international currency exchange regime pegged to the U.S. dollar which was, in turn, pegged to the price of gold.

By the late 1960s, European and Japanese exports became more competitive with U.S. exports. There was a large supply of dollars around the world, making it difficult to back dollars with gold. President Nixon ceased the direct convertibility of U.S. dollars to gold in 1971. This ended both the gold standard and the limit on the amount of currency that could be printed.

Although it has remained the international reserve currency, the U.S. dollar has increasingly lost its purchasing power since then.

Russia and China’s Steps Towards De-Dollarization

Concerned about America’s dominance over the global financial system and the country’s ability to ‘weaponize’ it, other nations have been testing alternatives to reduce the dollar’s hegemony.

As the United States and other Western nations imposed economic sanctions against Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow and the Chinese government have been teaming up to reduce reliance on the dollar and to establish cooperation between their financial systems.

Since the invasion in 2022, the ruble-yuan trade has increased eighty-fold. Russia and Iran are also working together to launch a cryptocurrency backed by gold, according to Russian news agency Vedmosti.

In addition, central banks (especially Russia’s and China’s) have bought gold at the fastest pace since 1967 as countries move to diversify their reserves away from the dollar.

How Other Countries are Reducing Dollar Dependence

De-dollarization it’s a theme in other parts of the world:

  • In recent months, Brazil and Argentina have discussed the creation of a common currency for the two largest economies in South America.
  • In a conference in Singapore in January, multiple former Southeast Asian officials spoke about de-dollarization efforts underway.
  • The UAE and India are in talks to use rupees to trade non-oil commodities in a shift away from the dollar, according to Reuters.
  • For the first time in 48 years, Saudi Arabia said that the oil-rich nation is open to trading in currencies besides the U.S. dollar.

Despite these movements, few expect to see the end of the dollar’s global sovereign status anytime soon. Currently, central banks still hold about 60% of their foreign exchange reserves in dollars.

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