This week the UAE surprised markets by announcing that it would be leaving OPEC+ effective May 1st, after being a member since 1967 (please see UAE Economics: Preliminary Take on the OPEC+ Exit). Among the likely reasons are that the producer country has continued expanding its production capacity while being constrained by OPEC+ group output quotas, as well as regional realignments with the US-Iran conflict. This might mean the UAE is less constrained from raising production from pre-conflict ~3.3-3.5-m b/ ...