Angola announced it’s leaving Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) following 16 years of membership amid a dispute over oil production quotas.
Key points
- Angola announced it’s leaving OPEC following 16 years of membership amid a dispute over oil production quotas.
- Angola and Nigeria are the two biggest oil exporters in sub-Saharan Africa.
- Angola has vast mineral and petroleum reserves, and its economy is among the fastest-growing in the world – but economic growth is highly uneven.
- Much of its oil wealth lies in its separate Cabinda province, where a decades-long separatist conflict simmers.
- Angola – which had been an Opec member for 16 years – is not the first country to leave the cartel. Ecuador, Indonesia and Qatar have all done the same.
- OPEC is a permanent intergovernmental organization of oil-exporting developing nations that coordinates and unifies the petroleum policies of its Member Countries.
