Aerial view of the Jeddah Islamic Seaport, circa December 2019. While OPEC remains influential, its ability to shape oil markets increasingly depends on deliverable capacity, member cohesion, and Saudi leadership rather than production quotas alone. (Shutterstock/Evannovostro)

OPEC Isn’t Dead. It Just Lost Its Superpower

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The cartel still matters—but the Hormuz crisis and the UAE’s exit show that relevance is no longer the same as control.

The usual question “Is OPEC still relevant?” is too easy. Oil remains central to the global economy; Saudi Arabia remains central to oil. Decisions made in Riyadh, Vienna, Moscow, Baghdad, Kuwait City, and Algiers still move expectations and prices.

The harder question is whether the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) can still do what it once did: convert collective decisions into market outcomes. On that score, the answer is less comfortable. OPEC is not dead. But its age of easy authority is over.

OPEC’s Market Share Has Declined, but Its Influence Endures

The long arc is visible in OPEC’s share of global oil production. In the 1970s, the group accounted for roughly half of the world’s oil output. By the mid-1980s, after the non-OPEC supply response, that share had collapsed. It later restored scale, especially after the 2016 Declaration of Cooperation and the COVID-era coordination of 2020, by bringing Russia, Kazakhstan, Mexico, and others into a broader framework. But the 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis exposed a more brutal reality: barrels matter only if they can reach the market.

Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz changed the metric of oil power. For decades, analysts spoke about spare capacity. In 2026, the market learned the difference between spare capacity and deliverable spare capacity.

Saudi Arabia passed that test better than any other Gulf producer. Its 7 million barrel-per-day East-West pipeline to the Red Sea allowed the kingdom to continue exporting a large share of pre-crisis volumes even after the Strait of Hormuz became commercially unviable. It required emergency logistics, rapid rerouting,........

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