The United Arab Emirates announced on Tuesday that it will withdraw from the Organisation Des Pays Exportateurs De Pétrole, a surprise move that will take effect on 1 May, the Emirates’ official news agency said.
The decision, Wam said, reflects a long-term strategic and economic vision and the UAE’s changing energy profile, including faster investment in domestic energy; the agency added that the country had long made sacrifices within the group but must now focus on its national interest. The announcement came as global oil markets spiked on fears that conflict in the Middle East could keep Gulf supplies blocked through the Strait of Hormuz.
Markets reacted immediately. At 12:05 GMT on Tuesday, West Texas Intermediate for June delivery was up 4.94% at 101.13 dollars a barrel and Brent for the North Sea for the same month was up 3.79% at 112.33 dollars a barrel.
The UAE joined OPEC in 1967, seven years after the organisation was founded in 1960. OPEC currently counts 12 members and is led from Riyadh; in 2016 it forged a broader alliance, OPEC+, with ten other countries including Moscow to limit supply and support prices in the face of competition from the United States.
For years, the Emirates had pressed for higher production and had already received a more favourable quota increase than other members. A source close to the Ministry of Energy told reporters the UAE does not want to be bound by quotas once conditions in the Strait of Hormuz return to normal, framing the move as a reclaiming of sovereign control over output.
The announcement lands against growing signs that OPEC’s cohesion has been frayed by the wider regional crisis. The war in the Middle East has pushed traffic through the Strait of Hormuz toward a virtual halt at times; the narrow waterway normally carries one fifth of the world’s crude. Qatar on Tuesday warned of a “conflit gelé” — a frozen conflict — in the Gulf, language that underlines how protracted instability could be.
The UAE’s exit deepens a recent pattern of withdrawals. Qatar left the group in 2019 and, after 2019, Ecuador and Angola also departed. That attrition, coupled with the demands of managing output in wartime conditions, has made the OPEC+ framework the central tool for price management — until now.
The move also exposes a tension inside the cartel: the same member that received preferential treatment on quotas has chosen to step away at a moment when unity would seem most valuable. Jorge Leon noted that, with Saudi Arabia, the UAE is one of the few members that holds reserve production capacity; that standing makes its departure materially different from the exit of smaller producers.
Diplomatic timings add another layer. On 14 April Cheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan arrived in Beijing for talks with Xi Jinping, underlining how the UAE has been pursuing a diversified foreign and economic policy while recalibrating its energy posture.
The immediate consequence is clear: markets will now price Gulf supply risk against a backdrop where an influential producer has removed itself from the cartel’s formal constraints. The UAE’s withdrawal takes effect on 1 May, and the most consequential near-term question is whether OPEC under Riyadh and the wider OPEC+ alliance will move to shore up cohesion — or whether Gulf producers will increasingly act outside the cartel framework.
