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OPEC counts 13 countries among its membership, but one of them has long reigned as a first among equals. Saudi Arabia, with its production of around 10.2 million b/d representing about a third of the group’s output — and about 11% of world supply — has served as OPEC’s de facto leader, its swing capacity traditionally leading the organization’s efforts to manage the market. But last week’s failed talks in Doha to enact a production freeze saw a potential new oil producer group emerge with another player in the room that could have changed the dynamics of the market and challenged Saudi political eminence in world oil affairs. The Doha summit of 18 nations included 11 OPEC members and several major non-OPEC producers, most notably Russia, whose output surpasses Saudi Arabia’s at close to 11 million b/d, according to its energy ministry. Russia has geopolitical ambitions of its own that in many cases do not align with Saudi Arabia’s, particularly in the Middle East, where the two have clashed over the civil wars in Yemen and Syria. But Russia and Saudi Arabia were among the leading architects of the freeze proposal, before Saudi Arabia reversed course as the Doha talks took place. Had the talks been successful and a production freeze implemented, would Russia have found itself with an influential international perch in a new oil producer group that supplants OPEC’s role in overseeing the market? The question is moot for now, as it was Saudi Arabia flexing its political muscle at the meeting, scuttling negotiations over its insistence that Iran be a party to any production freeze agreement and demonstrating that the market still is beholden to Saudi wishes. But the failure of the talks, coming on the back of a fractious OPEC meeting in December, when the group scrapped its production ceiling altogether in a disagreement over output policy, has brought into sharp question the future of OPEC, which holds its next regular meeting June 2 in Vienna. OPEC is dead, many commentators have written, as divergent interests have cracked the group and made any consensus on how to manage the market as unlikely as a blizzard in Doha. “We’ve killed OPEC,” Texas Congressman Joe Barton said in a February interview with CNN, saying the December lifting of the US’ decades-old restrictions on crude exports will put a further squeeze on the producer group. The Republican is not entirely wrong on premise, though his OPEC death declaration is a bit ov...