The disaggregation of OPEC’s Gulf production coalition: UAE’s exit and the unravelling of the Arab oil order

On 1st May, 2026, the United Arab Emirates formally departs from the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), ending almost six decades of membership that began with the Emirate of Abu Dhabi in 1967. Officials in Abu Dhabi frame the decision as a sovereign recalibration of national interest, while markets read it as a supply-side shock muted by the Iran war. Both readings are insufficient. The UAE’s withdrawal is neither sudden nor primarily political. It is the structural endpoint of a six-year economic realignment whose internal logic was always incompatible with collective output discipline. To grasp why, one must abandon the familiar image of OPEC as a unified body of 12 equal members. OPEC has never functioned as a […]