The official, Hojjatollah Ghanimifard, told Iranian state-run television today that “the dollar has totally been removed from Iran’s oil transactions,” and that the country has “agreed with all of our crude oil customers to do our transactions in non-dollar currencies.”

The dollar’s spending power, like it or not, is at the mercy of Iranian president President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, says Addison Wiggan in the 5-Minute Forecast.

“At a November 2007 meeting of the OPEC’s 13-member cartel, , whose country already receives payment for 85% of its oil exports in nondollar currencies, urged other countries to follow suit and ‘designate a single hard currency aside from the U.S. dollar…to form the basis of our oil trade. ‘The empire of the dollar has to end,’ chimed in Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez; his state oil company changed its dollar investments to euros at his order — er, request.

“Rumors are circulating that the Bank of Korea, after selling off $ 100 million worth of U.S. bonds in August 2007, is getting ready to sell $1 billion more, and if Washington forces trade sanctions, China, which threatened recently to cash in $900 billion of U.S. bonds, will probably follow suit.

“In Russia, Vladimir Putin’s dream of a stock market to trade the country’s natural resources in rubles is not so far-fetched; in 2005, Russia, the world’s second-largest exporter of oil, followed South Korea’s lead and ended the dollar peg. And once again, Sudan is hinting that it will impose trade or financial sanctions against companies that do business with the United States — only this time, the words just might have teeth. As other countries follow suit, the dollar — and your spending power — drops. What does this mean? You will need more dollars to buy things than it takes today.”

This is the view of the group’s secretary-general, Abdullah al-Badri, expressed on Saturday during a visit to Iran.

“Oil supply to the market is enough and high oil prices are not due to a shortage of crude but rather it is because of the decrease in the dollar’s value, shortage of refinery capacity and some political tensions in the world,” said a-Badri, according to the Iranian state news agency.

According to Reuters, his views are in line with those of OPEC officials in Iran, the second-largest producer in the 13-member cartel.

US oil futures headed towards $108 a barrel today following al-Badri’s statement.  Reuters reports that “light sweet crude for May delivery rose $1.31 cents to $107.54 a barrel by 1035 GMT (6:35 a.m. EDT) after leaping $2.40 a barrel on Friday, recouping all of the week’s earlier losses.”

“Oil prices could hit $160 a barrel as soon as next week,” says Dominic Frisby in The Daily Reckoning UK.

“At least, that’s what ‘Zapata’ George Blake, the Texan oil analyst, reckons. ‘Zapata’ George has a habit of making bold calls that often seem to be proved right. He thinks there’s an imminent supply squeeze ahead, which will cause the oil price to spike. Daily consumption is exceeding daily production, he says.”