This is the first journalistic piece written according to the IDEA organizational model, jointly authored by Riccardo Ruggeri (screenwriter) and Gianclaudio Torlizzi (analyst). The conceptual framework with which the article was developed stems from an idea (as in the title) by Gianclaudio Torlizzi – founder of T-Commodity – who submitted his analysis for a scenario review by Riccardo Ruggeri – inventor of the IDEA +IA + NCS (new Social Contract) organizational model.
Readers thus have at their disposal a new type of journalistic product and can follow live a joint process of scenarios and analyses, intertwined with each other, but without any political bias.
I assume that the 21st century will be dominated not by political ideology, but by Business, therefore Management and Academia will be forced to live in symbiosis. *
RR
About twenty years ago I began writing a series of global-scale Scenarios. As a thinking citizen, I was fed up with Western leaders pursuing a tired culture of rhetoric related to a miserable stability/growth of GDP that was producing an increasingly homeostatic society, destined therefore to a swamp of living in perpetual emotional torpor or exaltation.
My Scenarios would all be characterized by being conceived as worst cases in which, personally, I would not like to live at all, but in which it might be very likely that I would be forced to live. If one is culturally prepared for the worst, one appreciates all that is best, thus having a better life.
I was the first to write those that referenced the outbreak of the Third World War.
Then those that excluded it but hypothesized for the West a Revolution like the French one at the end of the eighteenth century or the two communist revolutions of the twentieth century (Russian and Chinese).
Then I wrote third-type Scenarios which, excluding both hypotheses, were in continuity with the present. At this point, in my sole judgment, among a range of assumptions I chose, about ten years ago, those of IDEA Scenario 17. This essentially assumes that:
1 The United States will progressively lose world leadership and will be forced to a kind of Yalta 2 to reach an agreement with China to divide the World, and therefore Space. For both, in the 21st century business will come before ideology. Therefore, the first act will be to eliminate all types of regional wars (already today they lack return on investment), define their respective spheres of influence, write a new international law, made in their image and likeness.
2 At the dining table there will be the two of them, but they will be forced to invite, as guests, India (for its population, moreover growing) and Russia (for its 6000 nuclear weapons, 11 time zones, its infinite raw materials).
3 The countries not at the table (2 + 2) are on the menu. It is thus clear who will be the Leaders and Followers in the 21st century.
GT
The United Arab Emirates’ decision to leave OPEC should not be read as just a simple oil news. That would be a mistake.
It is a signal of global disorder.
Indeed: it is one of those signals indicating the transition from a world governed by multilateral institutions to a world governed by bilateral agreements on security, liquidity, and access to raw materials.
OPEC (plus version) was born to coordinate oil supply. Today, that coordination is no longer enough. Oil is no longer just a commodity. It has become a guarantee of security, geopolitical currency, financial collateral, an instrument of industrial pressure. In this context, staying inside a cartel means accepting constraints. Leaving it means regaining freedom of maneuver.
The Emirates understood before others that the new energy market will no longer be organized around OPEC quotas, but around three levers. There will be those who guarantee military protection, those who provide dollars, those who absorb volumes of crude oil and refined products. In other words: security, currency, demand.
And here Washington comes in. The United States is trying to rebuild centrality no longer through direct control of production, but through control of the financial and logistical architecture that allows oil to circulate. Swap lines, military guarantees, offtake agreements, settlement currencies: whoever blocks these nodes controls the flows. It is not necessary to own all the barrels in the world.
The summary? Decide who finances them, who insures them, who transports them, and in which currency they are paid.
The UAE’s exit from OPEC signals exactly this: Abu Dhabi no longer wants to be just a disciplined producer inside a cartel historically dominated by Riyadh. It wants to become an autonomous hub: energy, finance, logistics, data, currency intermediation. It is no coincidence that the Emirates increasingly position themselves as the bridge between the dollar, China, Asia.
Oil thus becomes part of a broader design: transforming the Gulf into a geopolitical clearing platform.
OPEC, instead, splits along new lines. There will no longer be hawks and doves on price definition, but countries tied to American protection, countries dependent on Chinese demand, countries attempting arbitrage between the two blocs.
Saudi Arabia remains the pivot, observing but not leading. Kuwait will follow Riyadh. Iraq, in the end, will have to choose who guarantees its security. Nigeria will follow the dollar and access to financing. Algeria and Iran lean towards China, but even there financial constraints could become stronger than political posture.
This is the real fracture: OPEC does not die because oil runs out. It dies because the function of oil changes. In the old world, the cartel served to govern the price. In the new world, the price is only a variable within a much bigger game: there are those who control global liquidity, those who control maritime bottlenecks, those who control refining infrastructure, those who control the settlement currency.
Beijing knows this. That is why it tries to position itself as an alternative supplier of refined products and as a major buyer of last resort. But without a global network of logistical hubs, storage, blending, distribution, insurance, domestic refining capacity alone is not enough.
China can produce many refined barrels, but turning them into a reliable international supply network is quite another matter.
The United States, on the other hand, are trying to make a leap: using the dollar, security, an alliance system to prevent the petroyuan from becoming a real alternative. The Emirati corridor can become part of this architecture: dollar liquidity towards Asia, yuan debt issued in the Gulf, cross collateralization, orderly liberalization of the yuan but within a system still dominated by the dollar.
However, keeping in mind that, as IDEA teaches, those not at the table are on the menu. And today many producers are not choosing a cartel, they are desperate and therefore seek a protector. For this reason, the UAE’s exit from OPEC is much more than an energy news. It is the symptom of an order breaking down. Oil is no longer coordinated. It is realigned.
RR and GT
In the current global disorder, realignment is the new form of power.
Riding AI means participating in the change of the 21st century.
IDEA + IA + NCS is its operational reference.
