委内瑞拉考虑退出OPEC，或重创石油卡特尔

A fresh blow to OPEC. Venezuela. This is our scoop of course, and might be considering leaving the OPEC cartel. Where does that leave the group and where does that leave its importance More specifically? STEPHEN: You know, they continue to shed members, uh, famously just a few months back, uh, the UAE also, uh, left OPEC. Um, so Saudi Arabia, the de facto leader of this group, uh, is losing more and more supply. And as they lose members, uh, to to for different reasons, uh, their importance will of course, wane already.

Uh, there have been questions about the importance of OPEC and OPEC+, which is the allegiance between, uh, those producers and Russia, um, especially with the with the rise in US shale oil. You saw in the aftermath of the Middle East crisis in the drop of inflows, uh, in March and April, you saw a big increase in US oil and product exports, uh, helping to kind of make up some of that gap. And as OPEC plus is gearing back to, to, you know, uh, a market um, with with Hormuz eventually reopening, if they have less members and less might their ability to, um, kind of push the market in certain directions will certainly be diminished.

Um, and this is very important for Saudi Arabia because they need to, uh, come back into marketing and resume getting, uh, customers as well. So they're looking at drastically increasing, uh, their production, uh, and whether they're able to get other members to do so, whether they're able to dictate the caps, uh, for other uh, members, including Iraq and others, it will be in larger question. I think one thing to take note of, though, is that we are seeing this set up between OPEC and the United States, the US being such a large, uh, producer of oil and gas thanks to the shale boom, but also now with potentially taking a stake in Venezuela.

Uh, that influence, uh, appears to be increasing.