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…

1. When will trading begin?

According to the Shanghai-based news portal Jiemian, which cited an unidentified person from a futures company, trading is expected to start Jan. 18. Multiple rounds of testing have been carried out and all listing requirements met. The State Council, China’s cabinet, was said to have given its approval in December, one of the final regulatory hurdles. The push for oil futures gained impetus in 2017 when China surpassed the U.S. as the world’s biggest crude importer.

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