The United Arab Emirates is leaving Opec and OPEC+, effective May 1, ending nearly six decades in the oil cartel and its wider production pact. The state news agency WAM confirmed the exit on Tuesday.
The departure removes Opec's third-largest producer from the group at a time when the Iran war is in its ninth week, the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively shut and crude has been trading well above $110. Under the OPEC+ deal, the UAE has been held to roughly 3 million barrels per day even though it has capacity above 4 million and ADNOC has been pushing toward 5 million barrels per day by 2027.
That gap between what the UAE can produce and what it has been allowed to pump has been widening for years, and the split now gives Abu Dhabi a clean break from the quota fight that has shadowed its ties with Saudi Arabia. The Baker Institute warned years ago that a UAE departure would be the most high-profile exit from Opec to date, and that is exactly what the group is facing now.
The friction has not been limited to oil. Earlier this year, Saudi forces intercepted what they called an unauthorized UAE-linked weapons shipment headed for southern Yemen and later struck the port of Mukalla with airstrikes. Abu Dhabi denied arming separatists, but the episode fit into a broader erosion of trust that the source says the war in Yemen helped accelerate.
The immediate market effect may be limited because the Strait of Hormuz crisis leaves the UAE unable to ship what it cannot move. The EIA estimates Gulf producers collectively shut in roughly 9.1 million barrels per day in April, a reminder that the region's real constraint today is not only production but also access to export routes.
The UAE joined Opec in 1967, and its exit follows a series of departures that have thinned the group over time. Qatar left in 2019, Indonesia suspended its membership in 2016 and Angola left in 2023. But the UAE move lands harder than those did, because it comes from one of the cartel's most important producers and from a state that has been signaling a broader shift toward OECD economies, including a $100 billion clean energy partnership with Washington and a national net-zero pledge for 2050.
Late in 2022, UAE Energy Minister Suhail al-Mazrouei said oil was in decline mode and warned that assuming it would last forever was wishful thinking. That judgment now looks less like a theory than a policy direction. The UAE is leaving because it no longer sees Opec as the best vehicle for its energy strategy, and the departure makes that break explicit.
