From the oil barrel to new products: The Gulf’s industrial war over Asia’s next energy cycle
Anelasticity has become its permanent operating condition: investments are heavy, infrastructure is slow, markets are vulnerable. Every crisis leaves a trace, every bout of tension shifts the structure, and over time the system ceases to return to its previous form. Hysteresis sets in. Old shocks now govern today’s behaviour, from Brent prices to risk premia in Hormuz and delays in Asian LNG contracts.
Within this environment, the UAE’s withdrawal from OPEC and OPEC+ cannot be read as a tactical move. It is structural. It signals a decoupling from a model of collective management that no longer corresponds to new industrial and geopolitical realities. The Abu Dhabi–Riyadh friction over quotas is no longer a technical disagreement but a clash of strategies. The trust deficit that began in Yemen and expanded into the Horn of Africa and North Africa now reaches the core of the Gulf’s oil governance, at a moment when transport insurance premia are rising and markets are pricing in permanent risk.
Saudi Arabia seeks central control of the marginal barrel and a regional architecture in which Riyadh remains the market regulator. The UAE, by contrast, seeks production freedom, diversification, and a role as a technological and logistical hub of the new energy system. The paradox that the rupture emerges in an environment of historically high prices reveals the depth of the dysfunction: even extreme prices cannot offset accumulated fatigue. Markets react with delay, inertia, and volatility, signatures of a system that has lost its elasticity.
Anelasticity is not only geopolitical. It is economic. Supply in the Gulf is inelastic because it rests on infrastructure that cannot adjust quickly without destroying decades of investment. Demand in Asia is also inelastic: the industries of China, India, and Southeast Asia cannot easily substitute Gulf hydrocarbons. When both sides are rigid, every price shock leaves a permanent deformation. Hysteresis becomes economic and geopolitical at the same time.
NAFTEMPORIKI / OPINIONS, Wednesday, April 29, 2026