I’ve been following the issue of UAE’s threat to pull out of OPEC for the past two years as subscribers who read my periodic commentaries on oil in the Newsletter will be well aware. I think the question Jim Krane poses is a very valid one; and his subsequent analysis is both very valid and balanced. My personal view is that, the downsides of pulling out notwithstanding, the UAE has more to gain than lose quitting OPEC, especially as far as the ‘stranded assets’ issue is concerned where, given the size of its reserves, it has a great deal more to lose than a good many OPEC+ members. This is not to say that I firmly believe that it will quit; but I do think that this is a non-negligible probability even though it has managed to use the threat successfully to ratchet up its baseline (on which see my comment in the 6 June Newsletter). One thing we can be sure of (if I may hitch onto Bill and Jim’s reference towards the end of their chat) is that UAE’s quitting would surely ‘rock the casbah’!
I’ve been following the issue of UAE’s threat to pull out of OPEC for the past two years as subscribers who read my periodic commentaries on oil in the Newsletter will be well aware. I think the question Jim Krane poses is a very valid one; and his subsequent analysis is both very valid and balanced. My personal view is that, the downsides of pulling out notwithstanding, the UAE has more to gain than lose quitting OPEC, especially as far as the ‘stranded assets’ issue is concerned where, given the size of its reserves, it has a great deal more to lose than a good many OPEC+ members. This is not to say that I firmly believe that it will quit; but I do think that this is a non-negligible probability even though it has managed to use the threat successfully to ratchet up its baseline (on which see my comment in the 6 June Newsletter). One thing we can be sure of (if I may hitch onto Bill and Jim’s reference towards the end of their chat) is that UAE’s quitting would surely ‘rock the casbah’!