Exiting the Oil Cartel: The United Arab Emirates Leaves OPEC |
CounterPunch Exclusives
CounterPunch Exclusives
Exiting the Oil Cartel: The United Arab Emirates Leaves OPEC
Photograph Source: David Falconer – Public Domain
Cartel members are not always a congenial bunch. Relations can get frosty and brittle over time. With the United Arab Emirates, membership of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has not been without its troubles, not helped by the increasingly snarky relationship it shares with the group’s de facto leader, Saudi Arabia. To be part of such a group entails mindful restraint, an understanding about production targets and a curbing of individual initiative. The statute of the group states its goal: to “devise ways and means of ensuring the stabilisation of prices in international oil markets with a view to eliminating harmful and unnecessary fluctuations.”
The group has been battered of late, notably in the field of diminished supply. The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz arising from the Iran War saw a fall of almost 8 million barrels of oil per day in March, a 27.5% decline from February numbers. Supply falls were registered in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE and Iraq. The fall for the UAE was in the order of 1.5 million barrels a day. But the Emirates has also suffered punishing barrages from Iranian missile and drone attacks, a problem officials feel has been inadequately addressed by such groups as the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Arab League.
On May April 28, the UAE announced it was exiting OPEC and the umbrella OPEC organisation “effective 1 May 2026.” (The departure follows that of Qatar in 2019, when its priorities shifted to the pursuit of........