Angola to Exit OPEC Over Production Quota Rift

By Adedapo Adesanya

Angola is set to leave the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) after 16 years.

According to its oil minister, Mr Diamantino de Azevedo, the decision was taken at a meeting of the Council of Ministers, led by the President of the country, Mr João Lourenço.

Business Post had reported earlier this month that Angola could be the next country to leave the group following a spat with the other cartel members before the November meeting regarding their oil production quotas.

Angola, which is Africa’s second-largest producer after Nigeria, was also given a lower crude oil production quota for next year by the wider OPEC+ alliance, which includes 10 other countries led by Russia.

Both Nigeria and Angola had underperformed and failed to pump to their quotas for years, due to a lack of investment in new fields and maturing older oilfields.

“We will produce above the quota determined by OPEC,” Angola’s OPEC governor Estevao Pedro said in an interview after the meeting. “It is not a matter of disobeying OPEC; we presented our position, and OPEC should take it into consideration”

Before the meeting at the end of November, Mr Pedro had said Angola was not considering quitting the cartel.

However, with this development, it seems that Angola no longer sees OPEC membership as beneficial anymore.

Angola wants to produce over the 1.18 million barrels of crude oil per day given to it by the group as it aims to achieve energy security and drive gross domestic product growth on the back of optimal production, exploitation, and monetization of its oil resources.

Angola, which joined OPEC in 2007, holds untapped oil and gas resources estimated at 9 billion barrels of proven crude oil reserves and 11 trillion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves.

Angola will be the next country to leave after Indonesia in 2016, Qatar in 2019, and Ecuador in 2020, which left after saying it would not conform to its given quota.