Major cracks appear to be forming in the OPEC+ alliance. After several years of unprecedented cooperation between OPEC members and non-OPEC producers, the growing regional economic and power conflict between Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi is threatening the arrangement. While much of the analysis of the recent OPEC+ disagreement has focused on why the UAE refused to commit to the new export plan, there are other factors that have been largely overlooked. A closer look at the ongoing investments by the UAE in its upstream and downstream industry is one such example. Abu Dhabi’s national oil company ADNOC has put in place a production capacity increase that calls for a total reassessment of the underlying OPEC production baselines, which were agreed in 2018. At present Abu Dhabi is allowed to produce around 3.2 million bpd, based on the 2018 baseline, but has a capacity now of more than 3.8-4 […]