Dr Bilawal Kamran
The UAE’s decision to leave OPEC is not simply a dispute over oil quotas. It is a signal — loud, deliberate, and rich with implication — that the old architecture of Gulf unity is coming apart. For decades, the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries served as the institutional expression of a shared identity among oil-producing nations: a collective assertion that the Global South could control its own resources, set its own prices, and resist the dominance of Western energy giants. The UAE’s exit does not just weaken that organisation. It exposes the fault lines that have been quietly widening beneath the surface of Arab solidarity for years.
Abu Dhabi’s stated grievance is straightforward. The UAE, one of OPEC’s most significant producers, was unhappy with the production quotas imposed on member states. It wanted to pump as much crude as its fields could yield, without being constrained by collective agreements designed to balance supply and price across the group. When Abu Dhabi finally announced its departure, the official statement was pointed: the UAE had made “greater sacrifices for the benefit of all.” The message embedded in that language is equally clear — the time for sacrifice is over. The UAE is done subordinating its economic ambitions to the group’s consensus.
That is, on its surface, a commercial decision. But commerce and geopolitics in the Gulf are never truly separate.
Every Man for Himself
OPEC was founded in 1960 by nations that had grown tired of Western oil companies dictating the terms of their own resource extraction. The founding members — Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, and Venezuela — championed nationalisation at a time when that word was treated like a threat in Western capitals. For the Western press, calling OPEC a cartel was both a description and a condemnation. It reflected deep discomfort with the idea that formerly colonised, resource-rich nations of the Global South could organise collectively and exercise real economic leverage.
That leverage was demonstrated most dramatically in 1973, when OPEC deployed the “oil weapon” during the Arab-Israeli war, cutting off supplies to countries supporting Israel and triggering an energy shock that sent Western economies into crisis. The episode left a lasting mark on how OPEC was perceived — and why its survival has always been politically contested from outside.
But the greater threat to OPEC today comes from within. The UAE’s departure is a symptom of something larger: the erosion of the political and ideological foundations that held the grouping together. Arab solidarity, Islamic world unity, Third World collective action — these were the values that gave OPEC its moral weight beyond its commercial function. As geopolitical allegiances shift and national interests diverge, those foundations are proving brittle. The UAE has simply been the first to say openly what others have been practicing quietly: when national interest conflicts with collective obligation, national interest wins.
How long Saudi Arabia can hold the organisation together under these conditions is a serious question. Riyadh’s economic weight and oil wealth give it a unique role in both the Arab and Muslim worlds. But weight alone does not guarantee followership, especially when partners are recalculating their own strategic priorities.
The Saudi-UAE Rivalry
To understand the UAE’s exit fully, you have to look beyond the quota dispute and into the deeper competition between Abu Dhabi and Riyadh. These two Gulf states are not just neighbours and nominal allies. They are rivals — for regional influence, for international prestige, and for the role of leading voice in the Arab world.
The rivalry has become increasingly visible in recent years. On Iran, the two countries have sent different signals. The UAE took a harder confrontational line towards Tehran, while Saudi Arabia’s posture has been more ambiguous — publicly denouncing Iranian attacks on itself and its Gulf partners, while quietly keeping diplomatic channels open. These are not minor tactical differences. They reflect genuinely different threat assessments and strategic interests.
In Yemen, the divergence became a direct clash. Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE intervened in the Yemeni conflict but ended up backing rival factions on the ground. What began as a joint military operation gradually became a contest between two visions of what post-war Yemen should look like and who should hold power there. A similar dynamic has played out in Sudan, where both countries have cultivated influence on opposite sides of a brutal internal conflict. In Libya, they are competing for sway over a fractured political landscape.
The OPEC exit, seen through this lens, is less about oil and more about identity. The UAE is asserting that it is not a junior partner in a Saudi-led order. It is a major power with its own foreign policy, its own economic model, and its own place in the world — one it intends to occupy on its own terms.
Pakistan Caught in the Middle
For countries like Pakistan, which have carefully maintained deep ties with both Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, this fracturing creates a delicate and potentially costly problem. Pakistan has long relied on Gulf relationships for remittances, financial assistance, diplomatic support, and energy imports. Islamabad has historically managed its Gulf ties by treating Saudi Arabia and the UAE as parallel pillars of the same regional relationship, avoiding any positioning that might be read as favouring one over the other.
That balancing act is becoming harder to sustain. When the UAE demanded the return of its financial deposit from Pakistan and Islamabad quietly complied, it was a preview of how these relationships will increasingly function — not on the terms of old solidarity, but on the hard calculus of leverage and obligation. Islamabad accommodated Abu Dhabi because it had little choice. That dynamic will repeat itself as the Gulf’s internal competition intensifies.
Pakistan will need to think carefully about how it navigates a Gulf landscape that is no longer unified. The comfortable assumption that Riyadh and Abu Dhabi can both be managed through the same diplomatic posture is no longer reliable. The UAE has declared, through both its OPEC exit and its broader regional conduct, that it is playing its own game.
The Gulf, for so long a source of stability and financial support for Pakistan, is entering a period of sharper competition. Islamabad would do well to read that shift clearly — and plan accordingly.
