Qatar Will Pull Out Of OPEC, As Rift With Saudi Arabia Deepens
Source: NPR
Qatar plans to leave OPEC in January, shaking up the alliance of oil-producing nations and furthering its dispute with Saudi Arabia. Qatar made the announcement on Monday — the same day it informed OPEC.
Qatar's Energy Minister Saad al-Kaabi said the small Persian Gulf country will leave OPEC because it wants to focus on natural gas — a sector in which Qatar is a world leader. But the move also draws another line of division with Saudi Arabia, the only country with which Qatar shares a land border.
Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties with Qatar in June of 2017, in a dramatic move that was matched by Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and others. Since then, Saudi Arabia has maintained a boycott against Qatar, a country that has sometimes pursued its own foreign policy goals against the will of its fellow Sunni states.
"Riyadh made a series of demands aimed at reining in its ambitious smaller neighbor, including that Qatar close down the Al Jazeera news channel," as NPR's Peter Kenyon reports. Other complaints have centered on Qatar's support for the Arab Spring uprisings and its relationships with Iran — a country with which it shares a gas field in the Persian Gulf.
Read more: https://www.npr.org/2018/12/03/672839704/qatar-will-pull-out-of-opec-as-rift-with-saudi-arabia-deepens
Holy crap
= new reply since forum marked as read
