In December 2023, Angola stunned global energy markets by announcing it would leave OPEC after 16 years of membership. The decision followed months of tension over production quotas. Angola had been assigned a daily output cap of 1.1 million barrels of oil – far below what Luanda considered fair. At the time of its withdrawal, however, Angola’s production had already collapsed by almost 40% in 8 years, sliding from 1.7 million b/d to 1.1 million b/d. The decline owed less to OPEC than to geology and high government intake: mature fields…