End of the war for Opec

In the end, the fiscal pressures and income loss were too great for Opec’s members to bear—and the rewards of the market-share strategy too meagre

In January 2015, Oman's urbane oil minister could barely hide his contempt. Just two months earlier, at Opec's fateful November 2014 meeting, the group-of which Oman is not a member-had stared at a weakening oil market and decided to do nothing. In the memorable words of one Saudi oil adviser, the kingdom had decided to "take its hand off the tiller". But Mohammed al-Rumhy was having none of it. "I really fail to understand how market share became more important than revenue," he said from the podium of a Petroleum Economist conference in Kuwait City. "We have created volatility-and volatility is one of those words that's bad for business." It was "politics that I don't understand". Lots of