Qatar will withdraw from OPEC in January, its energy minister announces.
BEIRUT — The tiny, wealthy Persian Gulf state of Qatar will withdraw from OPEC in January, the country’s energy minister said Monday, hinting that it wanted freedom from an oil cartel dominated by Saudi Arabia, one of its regional rivals.
The minister, Saad Sherida al-Kaabi, said Qatar would focus on its gas industry and dismissed the idea that the withdrawal was connected to politics, but not without taking a jab at Saudi Arabia and its clout in the organization.
Qatar is one of the smallest producers in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, and its modest contributions to the oil market will most likely dampen the effect of its move on prices, which have been battered in recent weeks by fears of a glut.
But the decision by Qatar, whose citizens have the highest per capita income of any country thanks to its status as the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, to leave OPEC after nearly six decades of membership is nonetheless a blow to the group and a possible sign of tensions within it.
“We are not saying we are going to get out of the oil business, but it is controlled by an organization managed by a country,” al-Kaabi said, without naming which country he meant.
Qatar, he said, was unwilling “to put efforts and resources and time in an organization that we are a very small player in, and I don’t have a say in what happens.”
In June 2017, Saudi Arabia and three other Arab nations imposed a travel and trade boycott on Qatar, accusing it of financing terrorism and interfering in the internal affairs of other states, charges that the Qataris have denied.
No other countries have joined the boycott, and the United States, which has a large military base in Qatar and counts Saudi Arabia as a crucial ally, has sought to end the feud.
Qatar has increasingly gone its own way and seemingly given up its hopes of reconciliation with Riyadh, doubling down on its ties with Turkey and political Islamists across the Arab world, and increasing its coordination with Iran, with which it shares a gas field.