Angola, Africa's second-largest oil producer, has announced its withdrawal from OPEC due to differences over output objectives, dealing a blow to the Saudi-led oil cartel. It joins Ecuador and Qatar among mid-sized producers that have quit OPEC in the recent decade.

OPEC and Angola

Angola joined OPEC in 2007 but has battled with Saudi Arabia in previous meetings on efforts to reduce output.
It stormed out of an OPEC meeting in June but later agreed to have a third party evaluate its production baseline.
For over a decade, Angola has struggled to reverse falling output.
Angola announced its departure from OPEC after 16 years of membership due to a disagreement over oil output limitations while the group works to boost world prices.

About Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Venezuela, Iran, and Iraq created OPEC.
It is a permanent intergovernmental organisation founded in September 1960 at the Baghdad Conference.
It is a permanent international organisation of countries that export oil.
In the first five years of its existence, OPEC's headquarters was in Geneva, Switzerland, but later it moved to Vienna on September 1, 1965.

OPEC
Full Form	Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
Formation	September 1960, Baghdad, Iraq
Founders	Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo, Abdullah Tariki
Headquarters	Vienna, Austria

OPEC Membership

OPEC membership is accessible to any country that is a significant oil exporter and shares the organisation's principles.
Algeria, Angola, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Libya, Nigeria, and the United Arab Emirates are now members.

Other Countries that Left OPEC

Several other group members have left in recent years for various reasons, including Qatar, Indonesia, and, most recently, Ecuador.
Gabon left the organization in January 1995. It did, however, rejoin the Organisation in July 2016.
Indonesia left in 2016.
Qatar left OPEC in 2019 to focus on gas, which some experts viewed as a jab at Saudi Arabia, the group's de facto head.
Ecuador will leave in 2020.

Countries that have Joined OPEC

In recent years, some minor producers have joined OPEC.
Equatorial Guinea was admitted as a full member in 2017, while Gabon returned in 2016.
Congo was admitted as a full member in 2018.
Brazil will join OPEC+ in January but will not participate in the group's coordinated output limitations.

OPEC+

OPEC+ is a group of 23 oil-producing countries that meet on a regular basis to determine how much crude oil to sell on the global market.
OPEC + nations are non-OPEC countries that export crude oil.
Members: Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Brunei, Kazakhstan, Russia, Mexico, Malaysia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Oman are all members of OPEC plus.