MenuAngola, the world’s 17th largest oil producer and the second largest producer in Africa after Nigeria, has left the organization following a lengthy disagreement over quotas. Only a few hours after this announcement, crude oil prices dropped by over a dollar as markets anticipated Angola’s state-owned oil company, Sonangol, to increase production.
Angola now joins just two other countries that have left OPEC: Qatar, in 2018, and Ecuador, in 2020.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries unites 12 of the world’s oil-exporting countries into a cartel of considerable influence. Together with Russia and a number of other producers that comprise OPEC+ the cartel has incredible leverage over the world’s oil supplies, increasing or decreasing production quotas several times a year and, with it, drastically impacting the international economy. Through the regulation of oil supply, OPEC tries to keep prices high, but not too high, fostering demand and, in doing so, profits handsomely.
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