Gas exports to a country like Canada are not very strange. Both Canada and the US are signatories to NAFTA (North America Free Trade Agreement) and all that you need is a link to the transcontinental pipeline or any other existing pipeline and a competitive price. In Canada gas tends to flow from the West to the East along not very far away from the border with the US.
"As for the $USD, it's demise (as a measure of value) is common knowledge. A billionaire is a millionaire adjusted for inflation - which is embarrassing for the $USD as a unit of measure. Am not sure if we have past the point of ridicule of the concept of using USD paper as a physical reserve - perhaps it is all electronic journal economics now instead''
For a strange reason people seem to think that central bank reserves are being held in the form of cash (in paper currency or its electronic equivalent). Apart from some cash balances being held in electronic form that is not the case at all. The bulk has always been held in treasuries or some other dollar denominated assets bearing for most of the time positive real interest rates.
The problem for the holders of these assets lies mainly in the risk and opportunity costs posed by having to hold a large portfolio of USD denominated assets. Unless the currency is pegged to the dollar there is always an exchange risk , which I presume cannot be hedged. Apart from foreign exchange risk central banks may incur opportunity costs forced when forced to swap a particular portfolio for one paying a lesser return. In order to illustrate this second aspect let's imagine that the Brazilian central bank has Brazilian government bonds paying 5% in its portfolio. Let's imagine also that people in the US are borrowing dollars at 1% and transferring their money to Brazil in order to invest in Brazilian government bonds paying 5%. As they start transferring their money the real, the currency of Brazil, starts to appreciate causing the Brazilian central bank to buy dollars with freshly minted reals. However, due to fears of inflation the bank may be forced to intervene selling its Brazilian government bonds paying 5% to those that borrowed dollars in exchange for reals. (this is called sterilization, an operation designed to remove money from circulation) As you can realize, in the end the Brazilian central bank would have done nothing but to swap Brazilian government bonds paying 5% for US bonds paying .25% while those that borrowed in the US would have ended with a potential annual profit of 4% .
Of course that there are currency exchange risks and costs associated with the operation, which are not being consider here. But if an operation like this goes as expected, you know now who would be paying for the speculators profits.
The Brazilian economy is more dependent than ours on commodity prices and when such prices were at record highs it must have looked liked a sure bet This is this called foreign portfolio investment and have other forms but similar end results.
