What Is OPEC? Members, History and How It Sets Oil Policy

Last updated: September 24, 2026

OPEC (the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) is an intergovernmental organization of oil-exporting nations that coordinates member countries’ petroleum policies, chiefly by agreeing production levels, in order to secure stable prices and a steady income for producer states. Founded in Baghdad in 1960, OPEC had 11 member countries as of September 2026, following the United Arab Emirates’ withdrawal earlier that year. It is headquartered in Vienna, Austria.

What Is OPEC?

OPEC is not a company and has no production or reserves of its own — it is a policy-coordination body whose members are national governments, each acting through its state oil company or oil ministry. Its stated mission is to “coordinate and unify petroleum policies among member countries, ensuring the stabilization of oil markets,” and to secure “an efficient, economic and regular supply of petroleum to consumers.” In practice, OPEC is best known for setting collective production targets that member states then allocate among themselves as country-level quotas.

Membership

As of September 2026, OPEC’s 11 members are Algeria, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. Membership has shifted over time: Indonesia and Qatar withdrew in earlier decades, Angola left in January 2024, and the United Arab Emirates withdrew in 2026. Saudi Arabia is the group’s largest producer and its de facto leader.

Since 2016, OPEC has coordinated more broadly with a group of non-member oil producers — including Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Oman, Bahrain, Brunei, Malaysia, Mexico, Sudan and South Sudan — under the wider alliance known as OPEC+. OPEC and OPEC+ are related but distinct: OPEC is the founding 1960 organization with formal Vienna-based governance and its own charter, while OPEC+ is a looser coordination framework in which OPEC members and outside producers agree on output policy together. Combined, OPEC+ participants account for a substantially larger share of global oil supply than OPEC alone.

Leadership

OPEC’s day-to-day work is run by a Secretariat based in Vienna, headed by a Secretary General appointed by the Conference of member-country oil ministers. Haitham Al Ghais of Kuwait has held the Secretary General role since 2022 and continued in the post through 2026. Above the Secretariat, the OPEC Conference — a meeting of member states’ oil ministers, usually held multiple times a year in Vienna — is OPEC’s supreme authority and the body that actually agrees production policy.

History

OPEC was founded on September 14, 1960, in Baghdad by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, in response to unilateral price cuts by Western oil majors. It grew through the 1960s and 1970s to include most major Middle Eastern, African and Latin American exporters. OPEC’s most consequential early moment came in 1973, when Arab members of OPEC (acting through the separate OAPEC group) embargoed oil shipments to countries supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur War, roughly quadrupling world oil prices and reshaping global energy policy for a generation. OPEC’s influence has ebbed and flowed since: it lost pricing power during the 1980s oil glut, regained it as demand grew in the 2000s, and has increasingly shared control of the market with the broader OPEC+ coalition since 2016, as US shale production changed the global supply picture.

Main Function: Production Policy

OPEC’s central tool is the negotiated production target, revisited at Conference meetings and allocated among members as individual country quotas. These targets aim to balance global supply and demand and support a price range members consider sustainable for both producers and the world economy. Because OPEC and OPEC+ members together control a large share of global spare production capacity, their quota decisions are closely watched by oil markets and directly influence benchmarks such as Brent crude and WTI.

Sources: OPEC Secretariat (opec.org); Al Jazeera reporting on 2026 membership changes; U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Recent Developments

The most significant recent change to OPEC’s composition was the United Arab Emirates’ withdrawal in 2026, following Angola’s exit in January 2024 — both departures linked to disputes over production quota allocations within the group. These exits illustrate a recurring tension inside OPEC: individual members sometimes prefer to pursue their own production growth outside the constraints of a collective quota system. Despite the departures, OPEC+ coordination with Russia and other non-member producers has remained the primary mechanism through which the wider group manages global supply.

Related Entities

• OPEC+: the wider coalition of OPEC members and outside producers (including Russia) that has driven most headline production decisions since 2016.
• IEA (International Energy Agency): a Paris-based body representing mostly oil-importing, industrialized countries; often described as OPEC’s counterpart on the demand/consumer side.
• Saudi Aramco: the state oil company of OPEC’s largest producer, Saudi Arabia.

FAQ

What does OPEC stand for?

Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Is OPEC the same as OPEC+?

No. OPEC is the original 1960 organization of 11 member governments. OPEC+ is a broader, looser coordination arrangement in which OPEC members plus outside producers such as Russia jointly agree on output policy; it has existed since 2016.

How many countries are in OPEC?

OPEC had 11 member countries as of September 2026, after the UAE’s 2026 withdrawal and Angola’s 2024 withdrawal.

Does OPEC set oil prices directly?

Not directly. OPEC and OPEC+ set production targets, which influence global supply and, through supply-demand balance, affect market-determined benchmark prices such as Brent and WTI.

Related The Daily Energy Pages

• LNG — how gas becomes a globally shipped commodity, part of the wider energy-market context OPEC’s oil quotas sit in
• Saudi Aramco — the national oil company of OPEC’s largest producer, Saudi Arabia
• Brent Crude (queued — The Daily Energy Encyclopedia)
• IEA (queued — The Daily Energy Encyclopedia)
• Saudi Arabia Energy Profile (queued — The Daily Energy Encyclopedia)

Sources

• OPEC Secretariat, Member Countries and organizational information (opec.org)
• Al Jazeera, reporting on OPEC membership and the UAE’s 2026 withdrawal
• U.S. Energy Information Administration, “What is OPEC+ and how is it different from OPEC?”

Illustrative image. Photo: Vincent Eisfeld, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons — source