Qatar leaves OPEC

Qatar has announced that they are leaving the OPEC oil cartel and focusing instead on expanding investment and production in natural gas. Qatar has the third largest known natural gas reserves in the world and is easily the biggest producer of liquefied natural gas ahead of Australia and Malaysia.

Qatar is only the 11th largest crude oil producer within OPEC accounting for around 2% of the output of the producer cartel. So their decision to leave OPEC is unlikely to have much impact on OPEC's ability to influence world prices. There is perhaps a wider geo-political significance in Qatar moving further away from some of their neighbours.

Follow the tweets below for some more background reading on the Qatar decision.