On December 7, 2024, the speech given by Rosneft’s CEO Igor Sechin at the Doha Forum drew a full room of attendees. Mr Sechin’s address, while touching upon such topics as the future of the dollar as a sanctions tool and the resurgence of gold, also provided an economics-based explanation for the background of the United States’ actions and highlighted their ultimate consequences for Europe. He also touched upon some of the efforts proposed by President Donald Trump to save the country’s economy.
Addressing the audience that had gathered at the Doha Forum, Rosneft’s CEO Igor Sechin noted the inescapable economic motives behind conflicts. While it had not been customary before to hide the real reasons for hostility, the United States has recently shown to be more inclined to pursuing a policy of disguising their true motives in wars.
“We have seen over the past 20 years that the number of sanctions introduced by the US has exceeded 15,000, on top of the 5,000 sanctions imposed by their allies in Europe. The energy sector, due to its nature of being extremely relevant to all, was chosen as a target of special focus and pressure. The repartition of the global energy market brought on as a result of an unprecedented onslaught of sanctions, along with stifling competition and disruption of long-term contracts and supply chains has led to price volatility, risks of shortages, and to the false goals of the “green” transition,” Mr Sechin noted.
As a result, the global world order that has been hinging on the US hegemony, is going through a process of painful transformation. The sanctions that had been illegally imposed by the West hit Europe extremely hard: its economy has stopped being competitive while the continent’s industrial output has shrunk by 5% over the last 2 years alone. Some 40% of the world’s hydrocarbon resources got affected.
“In the end, Iran, Venezuela and Russia were not the only targets of the sanctions. It was Europe itself that felt the true brunt of these sanctions as it has been getting abruptly deprived of stable and relatively cheap supplies. But also affected were the growing markets of Asia-Pacific that are facing the need to curb their aspirations for economic growth,” Mr Sechin argued.
Rosneft’s CEO reminded the audience that Brexit was deftly synchronized with the United States’ actions meant to weaken the European Union’s economy, a story that serves as a stark reminder of the Bible’s Noah’s Ark that was built in anticipation of the Great Flood.
“This is exactly what the UK did as it wisely and timely chose to sail away and steer clear from Europe that was gradually sinking,” Mr Sechin added.
According to him, the role of the dollar in international trade that is being used as a sanctions tool has been getting increasingly limited.
“The only way to return the dollar to its status of a global currency is to stop using it and its underlying financial infrastructure as a tool for applying sanctions,” Mr Sechin stressed.
In the meantime, national currencies have been coming to the forefront as viable alternatives to the dollar. Given that, the return of gold as a guaranteed collateral instrument for national currency systems seems well justified. According to the World Gold Council, just over the last three years the share of gold in countries’ gold and foreign exchange reserves has grown by nearly 8 percentage points to reach the level of 20%.
Mr Sechin also noted that US President-elect Donald Trump’s pending measures that had been announced back at the time when he was still running for office are meant as an effort to protect the US economy. Cutting taxes and interest rates, bringing more jobs back to the real sector while protecting US-based manufacturers and the domestic market in general all seem quite reasonable measures:
“It is not at all surprising that Canada, Mexico, China, and Europe will have to suffer as a result. After all, Donald Trump is the president of the United States, and not of Mexico, Canada or China who will be subjected to new trade tariffs with the inept World Trade Organization helplessly looking on.”
Rosneft’s CEO pointed out that a search for ways to restructure the mounting US debt is on and quoted a warning made by US analyst Zoltan Pozsar who had made a prediction that the United States might try to impose a whole new financial system on the world as it had been threatening to impose all-out customs duties on all imports.