Despite the public spat between two of OPEC’s top producers, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the wider OPEC+ group is expected to confirm at a Sunday meeting that it would hold output steady through the first quarter of 2026, delegates from the alliance told Reuters on Friday.
In recent days, OPEC’s top producer and de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, and the cartel’s large producer and influential member, the UAE, had a very public rift regarding their backing of opposing sides in Yemen.
Saudi forces intercepted earlier this week what they said was an unauthorized UAE-linked shipment of weapons and military equipment destined for southern Yemen. The Saudi-led coalition dished out an airstrike on the southern Yemeni port of Mukalla after Riyadh framed it as a security breach. Abu Dhabi claimed that the equipment was intended for its own counterterrorism forces and denied that it was arming separatist groups.
In the end, the UAE said it would pull out its remaining forces out of Yemen, Reuters reported.
On Friday, the Yemeni government backed by Saudi Arabia launched an operation against separatists in southern Yemen believed to be backed by the UAE. The Saudi-backed government in Yemen said the move was a peaceful operation to reclaim military positions from the separatists.
Amr Al Bidh, an official at the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council, told Reuters the Saudis had misled the public and the operation was anything but peaceful.
Amid the heightened tensions between Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the eight OPEC+ nations implementing production cuts and including both countries are set to meet on Sunday.
In November, the eight OPEC+ producers – Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, UAE, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria, and Oman – decided to keep production steady over the first quarter of 2026, and “to pause production increments in January, February, and March 2026 due to seasonality.”
The most recent Saudi-UAE spat is unlikely to change OPEC+’s course to keep oil prices supported through the period of seasonally weaker demand, according to analysts. The group and the OPEC cartel have kept cohesion at many turbulent times, including the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, and, more recently, the sanctions on Iran and Venezuela.
By Michael Kern for Oilprice.com
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