UAE OPEC

The UAE says it will leave OPEC, amid tensions with Saudi Arabia and the chaos of the Iran war. A MARTÍNEZ, HOST: The United Arab Emirates announced this morning that they are leaving OPEC. That's the global oil cartel that governs production of the vital commodity. The UAE says the decision was based on meeting the market's needs. NPR's international correspondent Aya Batrawy joins us from Dubai to explain what all this means. I mean, Aya, the UAE has been an OPEC member for nearly 60 years. So why leave now? AYA BATRAWY, BYLINE: Yeah, Abu Dhabi signed up in 1967. But it's been dissatisfied with OPEC's production quotas and its curbs on output for a while now. One clear example was back in the COVID-19 crisis, when the UAE said it believed that OPEC - which stands for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries - and its alliance with Russia, which is now known as OPEC+, needed to increase their production. And it called the quotas unfair. Now, those quotas are there to keep oil prices from swinging too high or too low, ensuring that supply meets demand. But what we saw today was the UAE saying, that's it. It's leaving the group as of May 1 this Friday. Now, the UAE says this decision is based on its national interests and meeting the market's needs. MARTÍNEZ: Yeah, and it's not easy to avoid the politics of leaving OPEC. BATRAWY: Yeah. I mean, this is the clearest example yet of the UAE striking out on its own. …