“Strengthen its hand,” they say.
The past decade looks less like strength and more like a prolonged demonstration of diminished leverage.
The very need to append a “Plus” to the original club should have been the first clue. When a cartel must expand its circle to maintain relevance, it is not projecting dominance. It is signaling dilution.
Look at crude prices.
For what feels like an eternity, oil has been trying to establish itself sustainably above USD 70 per barrel. Each time one of the major benchmarks edges slightly beyond that threshold, gravity reasserts itself and the price slips back into the sixties. The market does not behave as though it is under firm control.
And context matters.
We are not in the 2000s. We are not even in the 2010s. In the years before COVID, inflation in most developed economies was barely noticeable — a rounding error in household calculations. Today, inflation is the metric that defines daily life. It is the silent tax that makes groceries feel punitive and housing unattainable.
Money buys less than it used to.
Which means a nominal USD 70 barrel in 2010 is not equivalent to a nominal USD 70 barrel in 2026. I have not run a detailed inflation adjustment here, but it does not require precision to understand the direction. A USD 70 barrel in 2010 likely translates closer to USD 85 or USD 90 in today’s dollars.
If crude struggles to hold USD 70 now, real prices have fallen significantly.
That is not a minor technicality. It is a structural shift.
Oil exporters transact in US dollars. When the dollar’s purchasing power erodes and nominal oil prices fail to compensate, the real revenue stream weakens. For countries whose fiscal stability depends heavily on hydrocarbon exports, this is not academic. Budget break-even prices creep upward. Social spending commitments remain sticky. Domestic expectations do not deflate just because real oil revenue does.
Low real oil prices are not what OPEC nations prefer. Quite the opposite.
Yet despite production quotas, headline-grabbing announcements, coordinated cuts, and expanded membership under the OPEC+ umbrella, the market has repeatedly refused to deliver sustained price elevation.
That tells you something about the balance of power.
Shale flexibility in the United States. Demand uncertainties in a slowing global economy. Energy transition rhetoric affecting investment flows. Geopolitical fragmentation. Sanctions reshuffling trade patterns. All of these factors erode the once-neat supply management paradigm.
Cartel discipline also has limits. Members cheat. Budgets strain. Political realities intrude. Coordination becomes harder as membership expands and strategic interests diverge.
In previous decades, OPEC could move markets with a nod. Today, announcements often generate temporary spikes followed by reversion. Traders fade the rhetoric.
That is not strength.
It is the appearance of influence in a market that increasingly resists central orchestration.
Adding the “Plus” did not restore the golden age of oil diplomacy. It was an acknowledgment that the original framework was insufficient to command outcomes alone.
Real prices tell the story more honestly than press releases.
If adjusted for inflation, oil is cheaper than the headline numbers suggest. Exporters feel that compression in their fiscal accounts. Importers experience volatility but not sustained price shock at levels once common.
The world changed. Supply became more flexible. Demand became more politicized. Capital became more cautious.
OPEC did not vanish, but the era of near-unquestioned dominance is over.
With or without the plus sign.