The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies (OPEC+) supply about half the world's crude oil. The cartel has existed for 65 years.
Strict quotas, cutting the group's production by nearly 6m barrels a day (b/d), were introduced to keep prices high. In December 2024 OPEC+ confirmed its intention to unwind some of the cuts by a modest 122,000 b/d each month starting in April 2025. In April 2025, however, the cartel declared it would instead raise output by 411,000 b/d in May—triple what analysts had expected, equivalent to 0.4% of global demand. It repeated the increase for June, sending global prices briefly below $60 a barrel, near four-year lows. On May 31st 2025 OPEC+ announced a third such rise of 411,000 b/d for July. The three increases together amount to 1.2% of global demand. Even so, by June 2025 OPEC+'s target output remained roughly 5m b/d lower than in August 2022, when it began announcing cuts.
The cartel can tolerate low volumes if prices are high, or high volumes if prices are low, but low volumes at low prices cannot be seen as a success. JPMorgan Chase estimates that a 1m b/d cut in OPEC+ supply, which triggered global price jumps of $20 a barrel in 2022 and $10 in 2023, would today lift prices by just $4, suggesting demand has become less elastic to price.
Iraq, Kazakhstan and the United Arab Emirates have persistently overshot their production quotas. Saudi Arabia, the group's leader, is betting it can cope better with price slumps than the cheaters thanks to its huge sovereign-wealth fund and easy access to bond markets. On April 23rd 2025 Erlan Akkenzhenov, Kazakhstan's energy minister, announced the country would prioritise its interests over the cartel's when setting production. Kazakhstan is one of the few OPEC+ members where international oil companies, rather than a state monopoly, dominate production, limiting the government's control over output. Kazakhstan overshot its quota by 300,000 b/d in April 2025.
The UAE is the cartel's biggest menace. It tells OPEC it produces 2.9m b/d, matching its quota, but independent estimates range from 3.3m to 3.4m b/d. After a reshuffle in February 2025, all OPEC's external production assessors are now commercial outfits that count the cartel and its oil giants as clients, and analysts privately admit their published estimates are massaged. The International Energy Agency, which OPEC dropped as a secondary source in 2022, puts the UAE's output far higher than the official figure. On May 28th 2025 OPEC+ postponed a comprehensive revision of quotas—originally due in 2025—until 2027.
OPEC produced fewer than 33m barrels of oil a day in 2024, just 12% more than in 1973, when the cartel curtailed production and sent prices rocketing. The rest of the world, meanwhile, produced 64m barrels a day, more than double the figure at the time of the 1970s oil shock. Global oil intensity—the amount consumed per unit of GDP—has dropped by around 60% since 1973, meaning events such as the Israeli and American bombing of Iran barely dent the price of crude. Fast growth in American shale oil and gas has made the world less dependent on both Russia and the Middle East.
The United Arab Emirates announced on April 28th 2026 that it was leaving OPEC, thanking members for "five decades of co-operation". The UAE, OPEC's third-largest exporter, produced 3.6m barrels a day (b/d) in February and had around 600,000 b/d of spare capacity before the war; it aims to bring total capacity to 5m b/d by 2027. Released from quotas, it will be free to pump as much oil as it pleases—though for now its only export route is a pipeline to Fujairah, a port outside the Strait of Hormuz that can handle just 1.8m b/d. The UAE was already troublesome as a member: experts reckoned it overproduced by as much as 200,000 to 300,000 b/d. Qatar had previously left in 2019. Venezuela may follow the UAE out. The remaining members plus allies like Russia still account for 40% of global output.
Hours before the UAE's announcement, Brent crude climbed above $110 a barrel for the first time since Donald Trump announced a ceasefire in the Gulf three weeks earlier; subsequently it rose to around $125. Over time the departure will weaken the cartel: with the UAE gone, nearly all OPEC's spare capacity will be in Saudi Arabia, which may have to cut more of its own output to support prices once exports through the Strait of Hormuz resume.
Knowing that oil demand could peak in the coming decade, members want to liquidate reserves. That pressure, combined with the spending needed for petrostates diversifying away from oil, means some are flouting the cartel's cardinal rule. The conflict between Saudi Arabia and the UAE, OPEC's largest and third-largest exporters, could make the cartel unworkable. The UAE cares less about low prices than Saudi Arabia: it needs oil at $50 a barrel to balance its books, compared with Saudi Arabia's $90.
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