My completely uninformed guess would be that smaller producers are better off outside the cartel. They can then set them selves up to be counter cyclical. Pumping when others aren't and visa versa. Without moving the supply needle very much, and so getting better prices.
I guess they don't have much influence in Opec, and Opec aren't worried because they aren't a big producer.
Also, while Qatar is a huge natural gas producer, their oil production is by Gulf standards small and this is unlikely to sway the global price much. It is, however, yet another step in OPEC's slow slide to irrelevance, since Russia and now, thanks to fracking, the US produce huge quantities of oil outside the cartel.
i've lived in kuwait as recently as 2017 - there is a general air of despair over all industry. when the oil prices took their recent nosedive, all projects were cancelled and the country took a dive into austerity. The projects were re-started in other forms when the oil prices went up but the writing on the wall became clear to everyone. lots of educated well off kuwaitis have purchased homes abroad for "re-settlement",nearby europe being a popular choice(italy in particular).
i imagine war,chaos and a re-ordering of nation boundaries is going to be the inevitable result of the decline of oil.
If oil is the only resource then why would boundaries get redrawn? Saddam wanted Kuwait for the oil reserves and not much else.
Many gulf countries rely on foreign labor for “ work locals aren’t willing to do”. They can drastically cut back on that and reduce the local pop by half or more in some cases.
For the same reason, but the opposite direction? Does Kuwait (in this example) have an identity strong enough that it out lasts its oil reserves, or does it faction back out among its neighbors as migrant workers disburse "home" (or the next richest country or what have you)?
Might not require wars to be fought, but might still mean borders get redrawn in the gulf region when the economics shift.
As one of the Arab leaders said, something along the lines of "my grandfather rode a camel, my dad a Jeep, I a Mercedes. But my grandson will ride a camel."
This is nothing but a laundry list of Saudi/UAE talking points re: Qatar. (The Saudi rulers are in dispute with Qatar largely because the latter refuses to muzzle Al Jazeera from criticising them or their regional allies).
Al Jazeera is one of the few places I can find news that isn't slanted toward eternal war. It's fitting that a military-industrial complex greenbean stooge would dislike it. Here's a clue: you're not allowed to bitch about downvotes with a green account.
> I have never seen a modern country that dares to host 9/11 terrorists, supports extremism ideologies, and openly fights countries that try to defeat terrorism.
Then maybe you should get glasses. If you give me a map of the middle east and I point at a random country the chance that they do all of these things (according to some people) would be almost 100%.
I carefully used the word “modern”. This excludes religious theocracies such as Iran and dictatorships like Syria, or failed states like the Hezbollah controlled Lebanon.
Qatar presents itself as a modern country that respects global order, when it is nothing but a terrorist nation that worked as the PR firm of Osama Bin Ladin.
Does this say more about Qatar or Opec?
My completely uninformed guess would be that smaller producers are better off outside the cartel. They can then set them selves up to be counter cyclical. Pumping when others aren't and visa versa. Without moving the supply needle very much, and so getting better prices. I guess they don't have much influence in Opec, and Opec aren't worried because they aren't a big producer.