Can somebody knowledgeable help me understand why this is in the interests of the UAE? Also, seems like a moot point since the strait is closed. Why do they think it’s in their best interests, and why now?
Can somebody knowledgeable help me understand why this is in the interests of the UAE? Also, seems like a moot point since the strait is closed. Why do they think it’s in their best interests, and why now?
Just my hunch but Iran is a founding member of OPEC.
The UAE has had a long standing land dispute with Iran.
The recent barrage of missiles might have just pushed the UAE leadership to have lost patience with their northern neighbor.
This might be an act of protest.
Probably Saudi Arabia is more important in OPEC, so that might be actually a middle finger to SA. Saudi Arabia and UAE had a recent dispute in Yemen that went pretty hot.
An alternative is the US trying to dismantle OPEC together with its new found supply in Venezuela to drive prices down
It was initially more union-esque to prevent being played off against each other and a dash of ideology. Then it became a cartel with the goal to to increase income / stabilize the market as well as a general international-economic-political forum because so much of their economies depend on oil.
Production limits were always a bit shady. Most meetings were just nations declaring what they'd (be able to) do and then a lot of talking to maybe see if things could be tweaked a bit and come up with a statement that made it look useful.
Their last 'success' was before Russia-Ukraine where they basically tried to suppress the price to make US shale too expensive and reduce its market share. Which happened. But again, debatable to what extend by OPEC's influence while they do write their own press release - with the explicit goal that the perception of power increases the price more.
Currently the entire region is going up in flames and allegiances are being stressed to breaking point.
The UAE leaving - as far as i can tell - is just a middle finger telling some of the club members its a farce and useless when it comes to its goals and (soft) powers, in the new reality of war & US export dominance. The middle finger being a political signal as everyone seems to be in disagreement on how best to handle the Israel-US-Iran war.
They don’t have production limits anymore, and can produce and sell as much oil as they have capacity for.
Ok but:
- why now? What has changed that made the lack of limits more attractive than it used to be?
- despite no limits, the strait is blocked, so they still can’t sell anything?
1) The UAE has its "Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habshan%E2%80%93Fujairah_oil_p...) to Fujairah export terminal on the "Gulf of Oman" bypassing the choke-point of "Strait of Hormuz" entirely. Given the current blockade of the strait and its uncertain future, Fujairah is now central to crude oil shipments for the World Market.
2) Thus far, the UAE has been prevented from maximizing its revenues due to OPEC/OPEC+ production caps which is no longer acceptable due to global needs. It can now chart its own independent course by ramping up production and earn hard currency which can be its leverage against an uncertain future. For instance, UAE just signed a deal with South Korea to give it guaranteed "priority access" (meaning first before others) and "joint stockpiling" (for world market) of 24 million barrels. Other countries in Asia who have storage capabilities are also "tripping over each other" to cut similar deals with UAE. This is once-in-a-lifetime opportunity not to be missed.
3) Discontent with OPEC/OPEC+ and its members since the current conflict has made it clear that nobody will come to its aid when the chips are down (other than the US). It is "every man for himself" now and thus UAE has decided to chart its own independent path.
This is very welcome news and i hope other OPEC/OPEC+ members will also follow suit in their own national interests.
1) The pipeline to Fujairah has capacity of 1.5m barrels per day, i.e. less than hald of UAE's current oil production. They still need Hormuz badly.
2) They can gain by increasing their production, IF they can get that out through Hozmuz. And IF (after Hormuz is opened) other OPEC+ countries DO NOT decide to do the same and the price of oil collapses.
3) US did not meaningfully came to their help. The high-end air defense systems were reserved/moved to Isreal. They mostly defended themselves, with the stuff they bought over the years from the US. A slightly cynical take would be 'classic protection racket'.
4) The national interests of other OPEC members are best served by being united against greater forces from outside region, not by fracturing and bickering among themselves. This is classical divide and conquer.
> 1) The pipeline to Fujairah has capacity of 1.5m barrels per day, i.e. less than hald of UAE's current oil production. They still need Hormuz badly.
Not quite. ADCOP was carrying 50% of UAE production (1.5-1.8 million bpd) and is being ramped up significantly. OPEC had limited UAE's output to 2.9-3.5 million bpd thus far and since the conflict UAE has been targeting 5 million bpd. With this announcement the dependence on Hormuz is being lessened drastically.
> 2) They can gain by increasing their production, IF they can get that out through Hozmuz. And IF (after Hormuz is opened) other OPEC+ countries DO NOT decide to do the same and the price of oil collapses.
As pointed out above Hormuz is being bypassed with ADCOP's capacity being ramped up. I am willing to bet, this announcement is what will get Iran to seriously consider removing its blockade of Strait of Hormuz since its main leverage will be gone. A good example is Russia's loss of leverage over Europe when most of the EU countries cut their dependencies on Russian Oil/Gas since the start of the Ukraine war.
> 3) US did not meaningfully came to their help. The high-end air defense systems were reserved/moved to Isreal. They mostly defended themselves, with the stuff they bought over the years from the US. A slightly cynical take would be 'classic protection racket'.
Most of UAE's equipment is from the US. See US approves $7 billion more in weapons for UAE - https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-approves-7-bill... and U.S. Considers Financial Support for Oil-Rich U.A.E - https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/business/economy/us-uae-f... Only recently have they started diversifying with a major defence deal with South Korea.
> 4) The national interests of other OPEC members are best served by being united against greater forces from outside region, not by fracturing and bickering among themselves. This is classical divide and conquer.
Nope; OPEC/OPEC+ exists only to serve the interests of Saudi Arabia and Russia. The others went along since money was rolling in anyway. But now the geopolitical situation has changed and every member has to look after its own national interests.
1) any sources for 'is being ramped up significantly'? To what capacity? 2) how much are you willing to bet? :-) 3) selling them arms and then causing a conflict where they expend those arms is a protection racket, not a help 4) stating claims does not make them true. Is it in their interests for the oil prices to collapse? It is a classical prisoner's dilemma. Coordination helps all of them. Being on their own allows external players to target/influence each of the small ones separately, at their weakest. Classical divide and conquer.
You can easily find out all the details you want if you had cared to do your own research from the links/data that i had given you using your favourite search engine+AI chatbot. Instead you are just repeating yourself and expecting to be spoon fed. Moreover you are just spouting your own fanciful opinions ("protection racket"/"oil prices collapse" etc. really?) which have no bearing on reality.
However, for your edification;
The wikipedia page for ADCOP i had given above, lists a whole set of links from where you can get more info. and data. One main source is the website of ADNOC (https://www.adnoc.ae/) who owns/operates ADCOP. The UAE has been calling in loans (eg. $3.5billion from Pakistan), asking the US for money (links given above) etc. all towards having enough to ramp up production to 5 million bpd by 2027. The defence cooperation between the UAE and US is longstanding, with the recent war merely ramping it up. The OPEC/OPEC+ is just a cartel which should have been broken up long ago.
The UAE’s Energy Playbook Is Paying Off Amid Global Turmoil - https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/The-UAEs-Energy-Playbo...
UAE To Hit Its Oil Capacity Increase Sooner Than Expected - https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/UAE-To-Hi...
Will the Iran war end Strait of Hormuz oil supremacy? - https://www.dw.com/en/iran-war-strait-of-hormuz-oil-supply-r...
In bid to bypass Hormuz chokepoint, Gulf countries scramble to ramp up infra - https://archive.ph/Xh1aq#selection-669.0-669.76
I think we are talking past each other.
The increase in production capacity is irrelevant if you don't have a way to export the said production.
My question was specifically about the increase in the pipeline's capacity. Because your statement "As pointed out above Hormuz is being bypassed with ADCOP's capacity being ramped up." does not make sense otherwise.
Chatgpt tell me this this: Short term: increase ADCOP from ~1.5 → ~1.8–2.0 mb/d (confirmed and achievable) Medium term: expand storage and export infrastructure at Fujairah Long term: build additional pipelines/corridors alongside ADCOP
Short term is too small. Medium term does not help with the throughput, just better buffering. And the long term is, well, long term (= many, many years).
Why could something that might happen many years in the future force the Iran to open Hormuz now?
The thing is, 5-10 years from now the importance of oil will be greatly diminished, as this oil shock will result in much greater push for decarbonisation than all climate summits combined (and the technology -- mostly solar and long distance DC lines - is essentially ready, at a reasonable cost). The gulf states see this, so I am not 100% sure all those pushes for extra pipelines will come to fruition, once the Iran war cools down.
No, we are not talking past each other ;-)
You simply are not understanding my comments nor reading the provided informative links.
There are three things to consider viz. 1) Production Capacity i.e. new wells/sources 2) Pipeline Capacity i.e. pipeline bandwidth and no. of pipelines 3) Storage Capacity i.e both at terminal/port and distributed worldwide.
The Iran/Strait of Hormuz problem was foreseen long ago and the UAE specifically has been working on all three of the above. ADCOP construction was started March 2008, completed March 2011 and operational in June 2012. That gives you an idea of how fast things moved.
The last link about infra above lists some possible ways to increase pipeline capacity which in the case of UAE is actually Short/Medium term (easily within 5 years) viz;
... as well as enhancements or parallel lines to the UAE’s ADCOP pipeline to Fujairah,” said Kpler oil analyst Grabenwöger ... In terms of timing, the UAE probably has the most flexibility to move relatively quickly on incremental projects ...
There is also talk of extending ADCOP to the nearby Omani port of Duqm.
Conlusion:
“Five years from now, the Persian Gulf will have far better bypass options than it does today. No matter what the US and Iran agree over the future of Hormuz, the strait’s status will change. But the waterway will never be as critical to the global economy as it was when the fighting started six weeks ago,” Blas wrote.
> The thing is, 5-10 years from now the importance of oil will be greatly diminished
This line tells me you have no idea of the Petroleum industry and its importance to the modern world. Our dependence on Oil will not go away in the next 50 years nor even 100 years. As an example, look up "Naptha shortage" to understand how vital the byproducts of crude oil refining/distillation are to our modern industries. There are over 6000 petrochemicals ! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrochemical) Renewables only help with alternative energy sources, and given the way we have built our modern industries around petroleum they cannot meet all our needs. They can bring down our reliance on Oil but it is very longterm.