{"text":[[{"start":6.05,"text":"The writer is the UAE’s ambassador to the United States"}],[{"start":10.149999999999999,"text":"Forty years ago, I attended my first Opec meeting. It was my first time in a suit and tie, and I was 13. I was not happy; nor was my father, Mana Al Otaiba, then the UAE’s minister of petroleum and mineral resources. "}],[{"start":25.95,"text":"It was 1986, and oil had collapsed to below $10 a barrel earlier that year. He had spent months pressing fellow Opec members to strengthen production quotas and restore price stability. News reports from that August conference in Geneva captured the mood. “We have a long way to go,” my father told reporters. “I am not that optimistic.” "}],[{"start":49.95,"text":"He was right to be sceptical. The meeting ended without resolution. But Opec survived, and the UAE went on to become its third-largest producer."}],[{"start":59.45,"text":"Last week, after nearly 60 years as a member, the UAE announced its exit. This is a decision about far more than production quotas or wartime disruptions. It reflects structural changes in global energy markets, fundamental shifts in the world economy, and a clear-eyed view of where the UAE stands — and where it is going."}],[{"start":80.05000000000001,"text":"Opec was built for oil-dependent states. The UAE hasn’t been one for a long time. As Abu Dhabi, we joined Opec before we were even a nation. Later as the UAE, we were a young country whose economy depended almost entirely on oil revenues. Opec’s framework — collective production management, shared discipline, co-ordinated pricing — made sense for a state new to international energy markets and the global economy. It offered expertise, stability and leverage that a small, newly independent country could not generate on its own. But that country no longer exists."}],[{"start":113.60000000000001,"text":"Less than a quarter of our GDP is now tied to energy. Aviation, logistics, advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, tourism and life sciences are our fastest-growing sectors. In the past four years we have signed 35 comprehensive economic partnership agreements (of which 15 are already operational) with India, South Korea, Indonesia, Ukraine, Israel, Kenya, Malaysia, Vietnam, Jordan and others — broadening access to markets covering billions of people. We are advancing a bilateral trade agreement with the European Union. We have committed to a $1.4tn investment and technology partnership with the US. This is not the profile of a country whose primary interest is managing oil supply within a collective framework. "}],[{"start":161.60000000000002,"text":"The past year has reminded every government and every household what energy insecurity actually feels like. Regional instability has disrupted supplies, driven prices towards record levels, and imposed real costs on consumers, farmers and businesses from Des Moines to Delhi. The lesson is not complicated: the world needs more reliable, affordable energy — and it needs producers who can deliver it."}],[{"start":186.60000000000002,"text":"The UAE’s interest is in a stable neighbourhood, not a volatile one — and our energy policy, like our foreign policy, is oriented towards that goal. We have significant spare capacity and the infrastructure to expand it. We plan to invest tens of billions of dollars in new pipelines, port upgrades and hardened logistics to ensure our energy reaches the markets that need it, regardless of what happens around us. Our production capacity target is 5mn barrels per day by 2027. "}],[{"start":217.3,"text":"But within a collective production framework, that capacity sits idle. Leaving Opec is therefore not a commercial calculation alone; it is a responsibility. The UAE has the capacity to contribute to global energy security and international economic stability at a moment when that security and stability is genuinely at risk. We intend to do so."}],[{"start":239.65,"text":"Our revenues from expanded production will not simply accrue. They will be recycled into infrastructure investments across the developing world. Masdar, our renewable energy company, has spent twenty years building capacity across 40 countries, including the US. The Barakah nuclear plant — the Arab world’s first — is operational and generating clean baseload power. ADNOC has allocated tens of billions of dollars to advance lower-carbon solutions through XRG, its new international investment arm. We are not choosing between oil and the energy transition. We are funding one with the other."}],[{"start":274.15,"text":"As if these were not reasons enough to leave Opec, Iran also still remains a member in good standing, even as it flouts the cartel’s stated mission to “ensure the stabilisation of oil markets in order to secure an efficient, economic and regular supply of petroleum to consumers”. On Sunday, violating the ceasefire and international law, Iran renewed its attacks on oil tankers and energy infrastructure in the Gulf."}],[{"start":299.45,"text":"I spoke to my father last week. As a six-time president of Opec, I expected him to have mixed feelings about the UAE leaving an organisation he had devoted so much of his career to."}],[{"start":311.84999999999997,"text":"Instead, he reminded me that this was the plan all along. Like that suit and tie from 1986, we had outgrown Opec. Oil revenue was always a means to an end, he said. The goal was never to be an oil state. It was to build something more enduring — a diversified economy, a knowledge society, a country with the depth and the partnerships to thrive in whatever the world became next."}],[{"start":344.3999999999999,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1778052455_6126.mp3"}