UAE Exits OPEC+ Because Turns Out Self-Interest Exists

The UAE has apparently discovered that being in a price-fixing alliance with countries that constrain your upside is, shockingly, a suboptimal financial arrangement. The Financial Post frames this as a potential crack in OPEC+'s iron grip on global oil supply—as if the grip was ever about anything but members quietly calculating whether staying in the club beats going rogue. Spoiler: the UAE did the math.

Here's the thing about cartels: they only work when every member believes they're worse off defecting. The moment one player realizes it can pump more, sell more, and make bank while the coalition argues about production quotas, the whole enterprise becomes a suggestion rather than a stranglehold. The UAE didn't join some grand geopolitical realignment—it just read a spreadsheet.

Watch for the inevitable press statements about 'strategic repositioning' and 'market dynamics requiring independent responses.' Translation: we want the money. The real comedy is that this will be packaged as shocking news about OPEC's declining influence, when it's simply the oldest story in industrial organization: the cartel works until it doesn't.

Breaking news: self-interested actors pursue self-interest. More at eleven, or never, since everyone saw this coming from 2022.