The Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates said Tues­day it will leave OPEC ef­fec­tive May 1, strip­ping the oil car­tel of one of its largest pro­duc­ers and fur­ther weak­en­ing its lever­age over glob­al oil sup­plies and prices.

The UAE’s de­ci­sion had been ru­moured as a pos­si­bil­i­ty for some time, as it pushed back in re­cent years against OPEC pro­duc­tion quo­tas it felt had been too low — mean­ing it wasn’t able to sell as much oil to the world as it had want­ed.

“Hav­ing in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in ex­pand­ing en­er­gy pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty in re­cent years, the big­ger pic­ture is that the UAE has been itch­ing to pump more oil,” Cap­i­tal Eco­nom­ics wrote in an analy­sis. “The ties bind­ing OPEC mem­bers to­geth­er have loos­ened,” it said, par­tic­u­lar­ly af­ter Qatar with­drew from the car­tel in 2019.