RIYADH - At the third summit of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez urged the biggest oil exporting nations to fight against imperialism. His Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad endorsed this view and called upon OPEC leaders to stop pricing oil in US dollars, which he claimed were "worthless."
The weakening US dollar has affected the purchasing power of the OPEC nations in recent times and has pushed the price of oil above $100 per barrel. The two-day OPEC summit ended in Saudi Arabia with no consensus on whether the dollar should be bypassed for pricing and selling oil.
Bayan Jabor, the Iraqi finance minister confirmed that Iran and Venezuela had proposed "to have a basket of currencies for the pricing of OPEC oil. But a consensus could not be reached."
President Rafael Vicente Correa of Ecuador also supported Chavez and Ahmadinejad in this venture. Chavez though was very vocal in criticizing America, "The dollar is in a free fall and everyone should be worried about it. The fall of the dollar is not the fall of the dollar," he told reporters. "It's the fall of the American empire."
Saudi King Abdullah though brushed aside all this controversy and did not listen to proposals to abandon the dollar. Meanwhile Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi also said that OPEC wants to avoid a situation where oil prices skyrocket and push global economies into recession.
In an interview with the Polish daily Rzeczpospolita, he said, "We don't want to allow a situation in which there is a recession in any country in the world, least of all the country which is the biggest importer of oil (the United States)."
OPEC oil ministers are set to meet on December 5 to discuss the oil pricing issues including the weakening dollar.
