UAE Built a Pipe Around Hormuz. Then It Quit OPEC.
On April 28, the UAE announced it would leave OPEC and OPEC+ effective May 1, ending 59 years of membership. Mainstream coverage frames it as a quota fight. The structural fact: the UAE is the only Gulf member of OPEC whose flagship oil terminal sits outside the Strait of Hormuz, with a 1.5-million-barrel pipeline that bypasses the chokepoint entirely. They quit because they could.