By announcing its decision to leave OPEC last week, the UAE has seized an opportunity to attract more investment and strengthen the economy, ADNOC chief Dr. Sultan Al Jaber says.

“It serves our national interests and long-term strategic objectives, aligns with our industrial, economic, and developmental ambitions, and gives us greater ability to accelerate investment, expand, and create value,” Al Jaber, the state oil company’s Group CEO and the UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, said today in Abu Dhabi.

Al Jaber spoke at the opening of the annual “Make it in the Emirates” expo, a four-day government-sponsored trade show that promotes domestic manufacturing by offering incentives to attract global companies.

Among the event’s backers are ADNOC, L’imad Holding, International Holding Co., Mubadala and Dubai Islamic Bank.

The UAE’s exit from OPEC, which took effect May 1, was largely connected to its irritation with the oil cartel’s dictating of production quotas across the industry to keep prices high. UAE Energy Minister Suhail Al Mazrouei has said disruptions to oil shipping caused by the current conflict created favorable conditions to leave the organization.

Parting with OPEC “is part of a broader effort to reshape our economy and industrial base through a vision that connects energy, technology, and industry, aligning our resources with national priorities to build a stronger, more resilient economy,” Al Jaber said.

MSC, the world’s largest ocean cargo carrier, is launching a new Europe-Gulf shipping service that uses sea, rail and trucking routes to get around the blockaded Strait of Hormuz.

The new line will run from Antwerp through the Suez Canal to Red Sea ports before moving goods overland across Saudi Arabia, Arabian Gulf Business Insight reports.

The shift comes as the U.S.-Iran blockade has disrupted supply chains and threatened a sea corridor that handles about 20% of global oil and gas flows.

MSC said the hybrid network, which will begin operating May 10, aims to maintain reliable transit times to major Gulf hubs, including Abu Dhabi, Dubai and the Saudi Port of Dammam.

Top Gulf officials and investors will be taking the stage next week at the Milken Institute Global Conference 2026 in Los Angeles as the financial world focuses on the conflict with Iran.

Leading the UAE delegation will be Khaldoon Al Mubarak, Managing Director and Group CEO of Mubadala, joined by Deputy CEO Waleed Al Mokarrab Al Muhairi and Camilla Languille, Co-CEO of the sovereign wealth fund’s private equity platform.

Among other Emirati participants will be Omar Al Olama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work Applications, and Majid Al Suwaidi, CEO of Altérra.

The conference, which takes place May 3-6 at the Beverly Hilton & Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills, comes as investors grapple with economic fallout from the Iran war, which has disrupted oil flows and led to record gasoline prices.

The Saudi delegation will include Bandar Al-Khorayef, Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources; Khalid Al-Falih, Minister of Investment; and Reema Bandar Al Saud, Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Also on the program are Manar Al-Moneef, Chief Investment Officer of NEOM; Princess Noura bint Faisal Al Saud, Founder of Culture House; and Prince Turki Al Faisal Al Saud, Chairman of the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies.

From Qatar, Ali Al Kuwari, Minister of Finance, and Mohsin Pirzada, Head of Funds at the Qatar Investment Authority, will participate, along with Jasem Al Budaiwi, Secretary-General of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

The Middle East could account for roughly a quarter of global AI infrastructure spending over the next five years, Thiel Capital Managing Director Jack Selby says.

If geopolitical instability forces delays or cancellations of investments in data centers and other large-scale AI projects, the ripple effects could damage the industry’s highly leveraged tech and infrastructure firms, Selby said in a CNBC interview.

“I think markets have underappreciated how important the Middle East region is for CAPEX spending as it relates to AI and AI infrastructure,” Selby said.

“If the Middle East starts taking some of these projects offline,” he said, “the impact on the market could be much, much, much larger than what is currently priced in.”

LIV Golf is seeking new investors after Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund said it will stop funding the league beyond this season because the investment “no longer aligns with its priorities.”

The Saudi sovereign wealth fund, which has poured more than $5 billion into LIV since 2022, has retreated from a range of other costly projects over recent months, including scaling down its desert ski resort at Trojena and the massive cube-shaped Mukaab development in Riyadh.

Beyond LIV Golf, the PIF said in a statement on Thursday that it will continue to provide backing for “current and future investments in various sports as a priority sector.”

U.S. President Donald Trump, who has hosted LIV Golf events at his resorts, called on the PGA Tour to lift its boycott of players who left for the new league’s sky-high compensation packages.

LIV Golf appears to be closing in on the 18th hole. The Saudi-backed league that once turned professional golf inside out is set to lose its primary funding from the Public Investment Fund after this season, The Wall Street Journal reports.

That would effectively end the experiment that saw billions poured into signing top players and staging rival tournaments, as the kingdom reassesses where sports investments fit into its broader economic strategy.

An announcement by the PIF could come as early as Thursday, the Journal reports.

The New York Times reported two weeks ago that the sovereign wealth fund was planning to pull the plug soon.

LIV is now scrambling to line up outside investors, but any rescue is unlikely to preserve its current scale after years of heavy spending on stars like Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm.

The likely outcome: a downsized version of LIV, or the quiet demise of one of the most expensive failed game changers in modern sports.

Saudi Arabia’s quarterly economic growth slowed to its weakest pace since mid-2024, as the kingdom deals with the impact of the Iran war on oil.

Gross domestic product grew 2.8% year-on-year in the three months through March, according to preliminary data from the General Authority for Statistics – down from 5% in the previous quarter.

The oil sector’s growth eased sharply to 2.3% from 10.8%.

Non-oil activity also slowed to 2.8% from 4.3% in the prior quarter, Bloomberg reports.

“The playbook that the Saudi authorities deployed at the beginning of the crisis allowed them to be more resilient,” said Jihad Azour, the International Monetary Fund’s Middle East and Central Asia director, though the IMF has trimmed its 2025 growth forecast to 3.1%. 

The UAE’s decision to exit OPEC+ may chip away at the bloc’s influence over the oil market, but analysts say it probably won’t topple the 65-year-old organization anytime soon.

The immediate impact is likely to be more limited because the Iran war is already disrupting flows, but over time, the move could weaken OPEC+’s ability to manage production and stabilize prices.

“This exit is not about oil. It is about what oil revenues can build when they are freed from collective constraints,” Karan Gupta, a Director and strategic advisor at EY-Parthenon in Dubai, told The Circuit. It is about positioning the UAE as a strategic partner of choice for the world’s most consequential economies.”

Despite the change, Saudi Arabia and other core members are expected to keep the alliance intact, though the group may become less cohesive going forward. Outside the group, the UAE will have more flexibility to increase output without quota limits, allowing it to expand production capacity and compete for market share.

Once shipping access through the Strait of ​Hormuz is restored, the UAE will no longer be bound by OPEC+ production quotas and ​could gradually raise output, HSBC said in a research note. The bank estimates that ADNOC could lift production ‌to ⁠more than 4.5 million barrels per day, compared with an OPEC+ quota of about 3.4 million bpd for the May 2026 period.

“Signals have been there since Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan became president of the UAE. His agenda made it clear that the country aims to reach 5 million barrels per day of production by 2030,” said Mirco Neri, CEO and Dubai-based Co-Founder of Anvik Capital.

Among the factors that led to the UAE’s leaving OPEC were the continuous missile barrages from Iran, even though it belonged to the organization.

“The fact that a founding member’s aggression against UAE shipping and infrastructure has contributed to another member’s departure after nearly six decades tells you everything you need to know about OPEC’s internal coherence today,” Gupta said.

The UAE’s action may also signal to other members that they should rethink their place in the group, Kristin Diwan, a Senior Resident Scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, told The Circuit.

“I expect Emirati anger over what they see as a lack of leadership from Saudi Arabia in the Iran crisis has led them to value political accommodation less,” Diwan said. The UAE “will openly pursue their own regional strategy, based on their ties to Israel and the U.S., and are willing to break their connections to Arab and Islamic organizations, which they see as ineffective.” 

OPEC may not collapse, but its authority is gradually eroding and supply quotas are becoming harder to enforce, said Amena Bakr, Head of Middle East and OPEC+ Insights, at data intelligence firm Kpler.

“The group has been a force of stabilization and is needed to avoid constant boom and bust cycles and ensure that investment remains in the upstream sector,” Bakr said. “I don’t think this marks the collapse of OPEC. The group will evolve from here.”