OPEC: why quotas still matter

OPEC+ accounted for 51.15 million bpd, or nearly 50% of global oil and liquids output in 2025, according to Reuters' explainer on what OPEC is and why it moves prices reuters.com. That is the core frame for today's move: the producer group still controls enough marginal supply to influence price through quotas, but the current spike is being set more by geopolitics than by a quota tweak. EIA's STEO has OPEC liquids at 33.8 mb/d versus 106.3 mb/d globally eia.gov, which is enough to matter, while Al Jazeera puts OPEC at about 30 percent of global supply and OPEC+ at about 41 percent aljazeera.com. The market is trading the loss of barrels and routing risk first: NBC had WTI near $102 and Brent near $113 nbcnews.com, Reuters reported six Iranian tankers forced back by the U.S. blockade reuters.com, and ING estimates around 14m b/d is disrupted think.ing.com. The fresh wrinkle is cohesion: Reuters says the UAE exit weakens OPEC's control reuters.com. What could shape the next leg is whether that weakens quota discipline before the Hormuz disruption eases.