My article in La Revue de l'Énergie: "La fenêtre de rente : la sortie émirienne de l'OPEP+ comme aboutissement"
My article “La fenêtre de rente : la sortie émirienne de l’OPEP+ comme aboutissement” (“The rent window: the Emirati exit from OPEC+ as a culmination”) appears in La Revue de l’Énergie, no. 685 (2026/4), pp. 48-62, in the “Politique énergétique” section. It has been online on Cairn since 14 August 2026. The article is in French.
La Revue de l’Énergie
La Revue de l’Énergie is a French journal of energy economics and policy, published by the Conseil français de l’énergie and distributed by Cairn (ISSN 0303-240X, e-ISSN 2492-7988). It runs peer-reviewed articles by academics, engineers and practitioners in the sector.
The argument: an exit that is not a rupture
On 28 April 2026, the United Arab Emirates announced their withdrawal from OPEC and from its wider OPEC+ format, effective 1 May. International coverage read it as a rupture, precipitated by the war with Iran. I argue for another reading: the culmination of a fifteen-year trajectory, already legible in the OPEC+ standoff of July 2021.
What the exit reveals is the consistency of Emirati strategy: intertemporal rent maximisation — extracting as much value from oil as possible while it can still be monetised — funded by a diversification that recycles the rent rather than replacing it. That strategy is institutionalised in the federation itself, through the economic asymmetry between Abu Dhabi, which holds 96% of the reserves, and Dubai, a laboratory for a post-rent economy.
The article draws five operational recommendations for European energy diplomacy.
Publisher keywords: energy policy, United Arab Emirates, OPEC, oil rent, transition, Gulf.
Reference
Romain Blachier, “La fenêtre de rente : la sortie émirienne de l’OPEP+ comme aboutissement”, La Revue de l’Énergie, no. 685 (2026/4), pp. 48-62.
A shorter analysis of the same subject was published on Telos in May 2026.