From the Gartman letter:
Finally, and obviously quite bearish of the US dollar, we
note that Nippon Oil, Japan’s largest refiner, agreed to
buy oil from Iran and to pay Iran in Yen for crude loaded
this month... not dollars, yen! Tehran has been hinting
that it might soon chose to bill its oil clients in currencies
other than the dollar. Nippon Oil is the first large customer
to agree to do so. We note that Nippon Oil buys
approximately 25% of total Japanese oil imports from
Iran.
We note two things of interest in this regard then. Firstly,
we note that one or two analysts who noted this
transaction said that Nippon Oil had "acquiesced" to this
new Yen pricing. We suspect that Nippon Oil was more
than happy to be billed in Yen rather than US dollars, for
certainly it makes accounting far simpler. Secondly, we
were rather surprised how little notice this was given by
the forex market yesterday. We think this is
"Watershed"-like in its importance.
