Petrocurrency is a portmanteau neologism used with three distinct meanings, though often confused:

With the large rise in oil prices in the 1970s, there was concern that the world economy might contract if the oil producers extracted money and failed to recycle it back to oil consumers.

With a similar rise in prices at the start of the 21st century, more of these oil surpluses have been reinvested through sovereign wealth funds. Two early examples were the Kuwait Investment Authority and the Petroleum Fund of Norway.

The pound sterling has sometimes been regarded as a petrocurrency thanks to North Sea oil exports.

The Dutch guilder was regarded as a petrocurrency thanks to its large quantities of natural gas and North Sea oil exports. This caused the Dutch Guilder to strengthen severely in the 1970s when the OPEC started their price hikes. As a result of this strengthening industrial manufacturing and services were crowded out and became non-competitive on world markets, a phenomenon that is often referred to in economics literature as Dutch disease.