Three weeks after the U.S. imposed financial sanctions on Venezuela in an effort to cripple its economy and choke the Maduro regime, which in turn prompted Caracas to announce it would no longer receive or send payments in dollars, Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro proposed to expand his own personal blockade of the U.S., by proposing that all oil producing countries discuss creating a currency basket for trading crude and refined products. One which is no longer reliant on the (petro)dollar. “ Developing a new mechanism of controlling the oil market is necessary ,” Maduro said on Wednesday at the Russian Energy Forum, being held in Moscow this week. Quoted by RT , Maduro also blamed trade in crude oil paper futures as having an adverse impact on the oil market, which has undermined attempts by OPEC to stabilize prices. To counteract such “speculation”, Maduro proposed an alternative currency basket, […]