Nick Fountain

One time he yelled at the Saudi oil minister.

Are you going to change the price of oil?

Little guy had a lot to learn.

OPEC isn't a cartel.

It's just a supply management organization.

The Saudi oil minister doesn't control the price of oil.

He just... Anyways, wrong question.

The question at hand, why did the UAE leave OPEC?

Kate says the UAE is an interesting case.

Recently, they've been grappling with this problem that honestly all oil producing nations have to confront.

It's called the green paradox, which is as the globe decarbonizes, the incentive for oil producers is to pump more, pump as much as possible so they can get as much money for their oil right now before demand collapses.

So the UAE, along with trying to diversify their economy by becoming a financial hub and investing in data centers and aviation, has been wanting to increase their production.

But OPEC has been holding them back, saying, no, stick to your quota.

What was the first sign that you saw that the UAE might not be happy with this situationship?

Kate says she's seen tensions for years in those tea leaves.

Like the Saudi crown prince and the Abu Dhabi crown prince stopped going out of their way to say nice things about each other.

And maybe more importantly, the Emiratis started complaining more and more about their quota, which wasn't increasing, even though they'd made all these investments in their oil fields and vastly increased their production capacity.

They were basically saying, we've grown up.

Stop treating us like the little brother.

Kate says things really came to a head in 2021.