Angola Quitting OPEC Is More Critical Than It Seems
The departure reveals underlying tensions among the oil cartel’s members.
A floating production storage and offloading vessel about 250km off the coast of Angola.
Photographer: Rodger Bosch/AFP via Getty Images
The three most dangerous words in the oil market are “OPEC is dead.” The oil cartel’s obituary has been written many, many times — and always prematurely. The almost non-stop departure of member countries during the past decade – Indonesia in 2016, Qatar in 2019, Ecuador in 2020 — have provided ample opportunity to prepare eulogies, all of them a waste of words.1
So is the exit of Angola, announced on Thursday, anything but another blip for OPEC? At first glance, it’s irrelevant. But it has deeper implications for the bloc that go beyond what it means for global crude supplies.