Andrew England

The UAE is a much wealthier, smaller state, and so it needs a lower break-even price to balance its books.

If oil prices go down in the future, that doesn't hurt the UAE as much as it would hurt Saudi Arabia.

So this is where the UAE, if it's outside of OPEC, can just do its own thing.

It could do.

I mean, OPEC is a big, sprawling organisation of multiple oil producers, and they all have their own sovereign interests.

The production quotas that have been put in place to prop up oil prices have frustrated others, and there's long been complaints that some of its members have been cheating, i.e.

they've been producing more than their quotas.

So it hasn't always been a harmonious cartel.

I think we'll have to wait and see whether others do leave, but there is that possibility.