Africa’s third largest oil producer, Angola, has quit Opec in protest over the new method of assigning production allocations which was agreed on in June. Angola disputed the scale of steep cuts to its allocation for 2024 assigned in late November (MEES, 1 December), and less than a month later on 21 December announced the termination of its 17-year membership.
The new method of determining “Required Production” levels has been heavily backed by Saudi Arabia, and entails independent assessments of each country’s production capacity by three sources - IHS, Wood Mackenzie, and Rystad Energy. Angola only reluctantly signed up to the new process in June, where it was handed a provisional 175,000 b/d quota cut to 1.28mn b/d for 2024 (MEES, 9 June). (CONTINUED - 1084 WORDS)
