Petrodollar 2.0
Henry Kissinger travelled to Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) in 1974 to present a proposal to the Saudi royal family that might alleviate the financial problems arising from the oil crisis, the Vietnam War and the abandonment of the gold standard, in order to prevent a significant loss of its economic power and influence worldwide. The deal with the House of Saud was this: in exchange for advanced military equipment and training, along with security guarantees, Saudi Arabia would use U.S. dollars exclusively for oil pricing and sales[1]. Other OPEC countries followed suit by 1975, even though they didn’t get the same deal as Saudi Arabia. Since virtually everyone in the world imported oil from the OPEC, everyone in the world now needed dollars. This restored the demand for the dollar in foreign exchange markets. This reinforced the dollar’s dominance as global reserve currency. The dollar was no longer backed by gold, but by black gold standard. From that point on, the world had to get hold of dollars in order to buy oil. The easiest way to hold dollars was to buy US government debt. This paved the way, in the decades that followed, for the creation of a global financial system dependent on US interests. Changing world Thanks to the petrodollar, the US has created a system of geopolitical control unprecedented in history. Although dollars are now created primarily within the private financial system rather than through the Federal Reserve, the system linking the dollar to the oil trade maintains a framework of geopolitical control. The world has been in demand for dollars for decades because it needs them to buy oil, which gives the US financial system considerable leverage, whether through sanctions in the case that the transactions pass through New York correspondent banks (the CHIPS clearing system) or through private-sector mechanisms. This has been the main framework of the system for 50 years, but recently something has changed. The change began with the rise of the so-called Global South on the geopolitical stage, at the same time as the control mechanisms linked to the dollar were becoming an excessively tight straitjacket for their national sovereignties. In this regard, we see two key trends towards liberation: trading oil in currencies other than the dollar and withdrawing from the SWIFT payment system. It was not the first move, but it was certainly one of the most significant: Saudi Arabia decided not to renew this petrodollar agreement when it expired on June 9, 2024. This allowed Saudi Arabia to start selling oil in currencies other than just the US dollar, potentially weakening the dollar’s dominance if this marks the first step towards creating a system to replace the market that the dollar has been propping up. The creation of BRICS as a forum for collaboration among countries of the Global South represents a symbolic and practical counterweight to US dominance, as demonstrated by its new payment system. By seeking to bypass the US-controlled SWIFT payment system, these countries also avoid the growing economic sanctions imposed on nations that do not align with US interests. Although BRICS Pay is still evolving and not yet fully operational, it is part of a broader strategic effort to reduce reliance on the U.S. dollar, strengthen financial sovereignty, and create an alternative global payment infrastructure outside Western-controlled systems[2]. Geopolitics in full speed mode In recent years, and particularly in recent months, the US has made a number of moves that can be understood as an attempt to maintain its dominance over the energy market whilst preserving the dollar’s international role and reducing the risks of its gradual loss of reserve currency status. This strategy rests on a triple form of control: In reality, the current US approach does not differ greatly from the historical ‘petrodollar system’. The first two moves of control concern the physical aspect of the ‘petrodollar concept’, whilst the third belongs to its monetary dimension. However, perhaps what is new in this case lies, on the one hand, in the degree of aggressiveness displayed – something new for our generation – and, on the other hand, in some of the specific tactics employed, such as those aimed at controlling transit routes. Regarding the latter, it is worth noting that this could jeopardise freedom of navigation on the seas, a principle largely guaranteed by the US Navy, and taken for granted in the global economic system for many decades. Control over oil fields The origins of the petrodollar helped the US exert influence over a large proportion of the oil fields in Western Asia. The subsequent establishment in 1981 of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) amongst the countries of the Persian Gulf – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrein, UAE, Qatar, Oman- further strengthened US influence in the region, which boasts the highest concentration of fossil fuel resources. Here, the US administration has repeatedly intervened: it has waged two wars in Iraq in recent decades; in Iran, it installed the Shah in the mid-20th century, instigated the war led by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq against Iran in the 1980s following the Islamic Revolution, has imposed economic sanctions on the country for years, and has recently attacked it alongside Israel with the permission of most GCC members. Last year, the US initiated a blockade against Venezuela, the country with the largest proven oil reserves. In early 2026, it carried out an invasion of the country, kidnapping its president with the stated intention of controlling Venezuela´s oil industry. Control over the routes of physical flows The evidence suggests that pressure on strategic bottlenecks or critical chokepoints in international trade is also aimed at ‘containing’ China. In 2025, the US supported Panama’s decision to terminate the contract with the Hong Kong-based company CK Hutchison Holdings to manage the Panama Canal. Between March and May 2025, the US also launched attacks in Yemen, codenamed Operation Rough Rider, in the context of the Red Sea crisis. During the same year, the US administration repeatedly threatened to take control of Greenland (Denmark), most likely with
Development of energy communities in Spain
Generally, in the development of new economic-business models the first projects are driven by those actors who concentrate a sufficient number of elements that give them a certain advantage over the rest. These advantageous elements are usually grouped into economic capital, technical knowledge and public infrastructures.In territorial terms, this phenomenon gives some areas more possibilities for development than others to the extent that some have easier access to a sufficient combination of these advantageous elements. Social capital is the sum of actual and potential resources, material or immaterial, of a given community, which can be mobilised among the different actors that make it up, whether they are individual or collective, public or private. The development of energy communities will largely depend on the combination of social capital intensity and accessibility to renewable energy resources in each case. Categories of territories according to social capital intensity The result of the characterisation of the territory according to the intensity of social capital offers the possibility of classifying energy communities in a more complex way. Types of energy communities Download report
Towards the institutionalisation of public-community partnerships in the energy sector
The complex contemporary economic processes that enable the material and symbolic sustenance of people depend on energy. It is a resource of primary necessity and this makes it strongly linked to power and conflict. Access to and control over energy has historically been a fundamental political issue. The development of our fossil economies has led to the preponderance of energy ownership schemes (public and private) consistent with the liberal vision of ownership (exclusive and exclusionary) and with the dynamics of dispossession inherent to capitalism. But the energy transition towards renewables contributes to experimenting with alternative forms to the traditional ones: public (state) and private ownership of energy. This is due to the fact that in this impasse, renewable electricity becomes relevant, allowing the involvement of a wide diversity of actors: from large financial groups to SMEs of different legal natures (including social and solidarity economy enterprises), public bodies at local or regional level, and the citizenry as a whole. However, the fact that energy is such an absolutely strategic element for a country means that it is highly intervened by States and by supra-state bodies such as the European Union, fundamentally to guarantee security of supply in a framework of international economic competitiveness and a global energy and climate crisis. Intervention mainly involves a very high degree of regulation and ownership in the global energy sector, either through the acquisition of assets or through state-owned enterprises, especially in the electricity sector. According to the report State-Owned Enterprises and the Low-Carbon Transition published by the OECD (2018), 31 of the 51 largest electricity utilities in the world have a majority public shareholding, most of them Chinese and Russian. In Europe, the so-called ‘neoliberal consensus’ of the last quarter of the 20th century led to a reduction in the weight of the state in the electricity business and, as a result, only the Swedish Vattenfall, which is fully public, the French EDF (85% owned by the French state) and, in second place, the French ENGIE and the Italian ENEL, with a minority shareholding by their states (33% and 24%, respectively), stand out. On the other hand, it is also true that the very nature of energy makes public intervention indispensable. If we focus on electricity, it should be stressed that, unlike fossil fuels, once it has been generated, it circulates through the networks with little or no possibility of being stored. This key detail conditions its management because it requires precise coordination to match supply and demand at all times. To do so, it is also necessary to take into account the constraints imposed by the different generation technologies or processes: from their capacity to regulate production (for example, a nuclear power plant cannot be shut down suddenly or the production of a wind turbine varies depending on the wind blowing) to their geographical location (the distance between the point of generation and the point of use). Nor should we forget the management of international grid connectivity with neighbouring countries. In short, these issues cannot be ignored when discussing possible – and desirable – models of energy ownership. Energy is a resource that is difficult to compare to any other, and public non-intervention is inexcusable in order to adapt to its peculiarities. Energy ownership in Spain Before continuing, it should be noted that, depending on how one looks at it, linking ownership and energy does not only mean addressing the question of the possession of legally sealed titles in the energy sector. From a republican perspective, to speak of property is to speak of access to the set of material and immaterial resources considered relevant – of a nature and quantity contingent on each spatio-temporal context – to guarantee people a dignified livelihood. The social function of property has to do with enabling people to live a life of socio-economic independence. It is also assumed that the only interdependencies with others are those that are free from arbitrary interference. Thus, ownership is also defined by the right to control these basic resources. No one doubts that energy – and more so electricity in the current transition – falls into this category of basic resources and that public authorities are needed to guarantee the right to access them. However, citizens must have the mechanisms to control these public authorities. On the one hand, so that they do not allow certain private actors to interfere arbitrarily over others, giving rise to relations of dependency; and on the other, so that they do not feed clientelistic practices that lead to oligarchic and despotic logics. Looking at the Spanish case, we can conclude that the energy ownership model is far from fulfilling its social function: on the one hand, the regulation does not define electricity as an essential good in terms of universal accessibility, and on the other hand, the structure of property rights over energy infrastructures is controlled by a small and powerful block of private companies. As accessibility to electricity is not guaranteed ex-ante, what we do find in Spain are ex-post corrective measures whose level of effectiveness in universalising reasonable access is debatable: the bono social, Law 24/2015 against supply cuts, emergency aid, advisory services on rights, generation and optimisation of consumption, tax incentives or subsidies for renewables, or municipal supply companies. These measures do not tackle a problem that is structural and related to the legal system. Beyond ex-post public intervention, it is fair to point out that there are private initiatives whose actions are not profit-oriented and which offer a supply service with certain public service overtones, as they put the coverage of their members‘ or clients’ energy needs before obtaining profitability. This is the case of the energy cooperatives, among which Som Energia stands out. In its case, it is also an actor that promotes and facilitates popular participation in renewable generation projects, as well as an energy culture based on the values of sustainability, social justice and democracy. Energy communities and public sector participation Energy access schemes are