The United Arab Emirates’ planned departure from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries next month is far more than a simple energy policy shift. Analysts and regional diplomats frame the move as both a direct challenge to Saudi Arabia’s longstanding dominance of the cartel and a calculated geopolitical gesture to the United States, underscoring how the ongoing war on Iran has deepened historical divides in the Gulf rather than uniting regional powers against a common foe.
On its face, the split stems from years of simmering disagreement between the UAE and Saudi Arabia over OPEC production quotas. For decades, Riyadh has championed supply caps to keep global oil prices elevated, a strategy aligned with its economic priorities: as a nation of 35 million people with more than double the UAE’s proven oil reserves, it relies on sustained high per-barrel prices to fund domestic spending and infrastructure.
The UAE, by contrast, has long pushed for looser production rules. With just 1 million citizens sharing the country’s oil revenue, and massive investments in expanded extraction infrastructure that have left it with OPEC’s largest spare production capacity relative to current output, the Emirates has opted for a volume-focused strategy. Many of its economic planners argue that leaving oil in the ground carries growing long-term risk, as the global energy transition could erode the value of fossil fuel reserves over the next decade.
“The UAE is the OPEC country with the largest amount of spare capacity compared to production,” explained Arne Lohmann Rasmussen, chief analyst and head of research at Global Risk Management. “You can argue that this is the right economic calculus because what’s inside the ground might not have the same value that it will in five or ten years.”
Yet while these policy divides stretch back years, experts note that a major shift had already occurred before the outbreak of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. Once famous for warning oil traders they would be “ouching like hell” if they bet against its supply-cut commitments, Saudi Arabia has recently pivoted to a strategy of recapturing global market share, backing massive production increases that aligned it much closer to the UAE’s position. That makes the timing of the exit a clear signal that geopolitics, not just energy economics, are driving the decision.
“The policy differences between the UAE and Saudi Arabia have been there for a long time, but Saudi Arabia has pivoted to taking back market share, and the war has actually made their old argument less salient. This exit is much more political,” said Greg Priddy, a senior fellow for the Middle East at the Center for the National Interest.
In recent months, the UAE has steadily deepened its security and diplomatic alignment with the U.S. and Israel, even as other regional powers have taken more cautious stances on the Iran war. Earlier this month, Axios reported that Israel deployed an Iron Dome air defense system and supporting technicians to the UAE amid repeated Iranian drone and missile attacks on the Gulf state. Unlike Saudi Arabia, which has supported the U.S. war effort while backing Pakistani-mediated talks to de-escalate tensions between Washington and Tehran, the UAE has lobbied aggressively behind the scenes and in public for the U.S. to continue military operations, and has worked to block diplomatic outreach that could bring an end to the conflict.
Leaving OPEC now, as the Trump administration weighs whether to pursue a negotiated deal with Iran or escalate military action, aligns directly with a longstanding Trump administration criticism of the cartel as an anti-competitive body that “rips off” global consumers. Analysts have even raised the possibility that the exit is part of a broader trilateral bargain between the UAE, U.S. and Israel.
“It is possible that this break could also be the result of some sort of ‘deal’ between the UAE and Israel and the US, wherein they helped defend the UAE from Iran in exchange for delivering a major blow to Opec, which Trump has long sought,” Ellen Wald, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and leading expert on Gulf energy politics, wrote in a recent public post. Wald added that she would not be surprised to see a formal U.S.-UAE defense agreement announced in the near future.
The move also fits into the UAE’s preparations for prolonged regional volatility. Recent reporting confirms that UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed told U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Abu Dhabi is prepared for the war to last up to nine months, and the country has already approached the Trump administration to request a currency swap line to protect access to U.S. dollars in the event that its foreign reserves are depleted amid sustained conflict.
Beyond alignment with the U.S., the exit is widely viewed as a major escalation of the UAE’s long-running regional rivalry with Saudi Arabia, which has dominated OPEC’s agenda since the cartel’s founding 65 years ago. As the two largest Gulf powers, both Riyadh and Abu Dhabi harbor ambitions to project regional influence, and their competing interests have already spilled into multiple conflicts: Saudi Arabia launched strikes against UAE-backed forces in Yemen just before the Iran war began, and the two states back opposing factions in Sudan’s ongoing civil war. Most recently, Middle East Eye revealed that Saudi-paid weapons shipments from Pakistan began arriving in eastern Libya in March to support commander Khalifa Haftar, in a bid to pull his faction away from the UAE’s sphere of influence.
While many hoped the Iranian attacks on Gulf states would push the two rivals back into a united bloc, the war has instead accelerated their competition, and the UAE’s exit from OPEC creates an irreversible shift in the regional balance of power.
UAE Energy Minister Suhail al-Mazrouei has framed the move as a long-planned objective that was simply timed correctly amid the current chaos, noting that “the timing in our view is right because it has a minimum impact on all of the producers.” Bernard Haykel, a professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University who has followed the UAE’s debate over leaving OPEC for years, agreed that the war created a unique opening for the dramatic move.
“They finally did it, probably because of the war. Everything is up in the air, and there is an opportunity to make dramatic decisions,” Haykel said. “In practical terms, the Emiratis have very considerable spare capacity. If they want to play the role of market regulator like the Saudis have, they can do it. This empowers them in a big way.”
Energy analysts largely agree the timing is strategically shrewd. Competing blockades of the Strait of Hormuz by the U.S. and Iran have all but halted traditional Gulf oil shipping, cutting the UAE’s exports from a pre-war 3.5 million barrels per day to roughly 1.9 million barrels per day, all of which are now exported via the Fujairah pipeline that bypasses the Strait. That means any additional spare capacity the UAE brings online will not immediately flood the global market, avoiding a sudden price crash that would trigger widespread backlash. Even after the war ends, analysts note that major supply disruptions from the conflict have left global oil inventories depleted enough to absorb higher UAE exports without major disruption.
In the longer term, however, experts warn the departure of OPEC’s third-largest producer could spell the end of the 65-year-old energy alliance. “This is a big blow to OPEC,” Rasmussen said. “We could be writing its obituary.”
This report draws on independent analysis from Middle East Eye, a publication specializing in coverage of the Middle East and North Africa.