OPEC chief says the search is on for new members of the oil producers’ group
Haitham al-Ghais, secretary-general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), speaking at the Energy Asia Summit on June 26, 2023.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The secretary-general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Country signaled that the influential producers’ alliance is actively open to recruiting new members.
Asked if he is trying to expand the OPEC coalition, the organization’s Secretary-General Haitham al-Ghais told reporters on Wednesday: “I am, yes.”
The organization currently has 13 members, predominantly based in the Middle East, North and West Africa and South America. At stake for the group of oil producers is a battle to reconcile an outlook of tighter crude supply in the second half of the year, current macroeconomic worries, and inflationary concerns. OPEC members coordinate the amount of oil they output in an effort to influence prices.
Ecuador exited the group in 2020 because of political circumstances, but in May was invited to rejoin the OPEC ranks, according to a letter from al-Ghais shared by the Ecuadorian energy ministry.
“The Organization sees as a top priority that Ecuador joins the OPEC family again,” the letter said. The Ecuadorian ministry did not reveal its response.
Al-Ghais would not be drawn into disclosing the names of potential new members. He mentioned recent visits paid to oil-producing countries, however, including allies that currently implement a joint production strategy with OPEC countries, in a group known as OPEC+.
“I was in Malaysia, I was in Brunei,” he said, stressing that he had not necessarily invited these countries to join the organization. “I was in Azerbaijan, I was in Mexico.”
Previous speculation about Guyana’s potential membership saw OPEC state in late June that, while the South American country is “an emerging player in the international oil market with significant potential,” it had not been invited to join.
Asked about the requirements to become an OPEC member, al-Ghais said: “They have to be a net [oil] exporter, substantial, they have to have similar goals as OPEC. This is all mentioned very clearly in our statute. And I think many countries that I just named actually fit this profile. So … work in progress.”
Unanimity
The OPEC secretary-general addressed reporters following an OPEC seminar conference in Vienna, where energy and oil ministers met on the sidelines.
No new policies were announced, but ministers expressed appreciation for the additional oil production cuts of OPEC+ members Saudi Arabia, Russia and Algeria.
On Monday, Saudi Arabia announced that it would extend its voluntary 1-million-barrels-per-day cut initially outlined for July into August, while fellow heavyweight Moscow said it would trim its exports by 500,000 barrels per day next month. Algeria also said it will reduce its production by 20,000 barrels per day in August.
All three countries and several other OPEC+ members in April declared a separate set of output cuts totaling over 1.6 million barrels per day, which they have extended until the end of 2024.
Al-Ghais emphasized that the voluntary reductions enacted by some OPEC+ did not suggest divisions in the policy views of coalition members.
“When people can sit down and go through an agreement that goes all the way through, with a clear vision, into 2025, I think that’s a sign of unanimity,” he said.
“These are sovereign country decisions. They are extra. We appreciate them … It does not in any way insinuate that there is a fragmentation.”
Focus on investment
Echoing the comments of other OPEC officials, al-Ghais has also been advocating for simultaneous joint investment in fossil fuel projects and in renewables, in an effort to avoid energy supply deficits. Despite what he perceives as global underinvestment in hydrocarbons, he said that the OPEC alliance can still answer any potential supply crisis.
“Part of the decision to reduce production is also good because it gives us more spare capacity, and OPEC has always managed to step up in case of any shock globally,” al-Ghais said.
“Spare capacity is tight, I would say … And our countries are investing. When I talk about underinvestment, most of our countries, if not all of them, are investing … But it’s a global responsibility. OPEC cannot shoulder this on its own. We have to have everybody step up.”
Suhail al-Mazrouei, energy minister of the United Arab Emirates, likewise stressed focus on investment and availabilities.
“What’s important is not the price, what’s important is the level of investments that are coming to the market to balance the longer or the medium-term view of the supply,” he told CNBC’s Dan Murphy on Wednesday. “If something worries me, that’s what worries me, the medium to long-term supply. Not the demand.”
The International Energy Agency in May foreshadowed an intense supply crunch, noting “tighter market balances we anticipate in the second half of the year, when demand is expected to eclipse supply by almost 2 mb/d.”
At least 5 Waymo self-driving I-Pace electric cars were set on fire amid protests that turned violent in Los Angeles this weekend.
It could represent as much as 5% of Waymo’s fleet in Los Angeles being destroyed.
The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) launched several raids in the Los Angeles area last week that triggered large-scale protests across the city over the weekend.
The protests were mostly peaceful and aimed to bring attention to federal agents indiscriminately arresting and detaining people, but in some cases, they were violent clashes with the police.
Things took a turn for the worse with President Trump calling the National Guard.
There have been several instances of rioting, looting, and general property damage.
In a unique case, it appears that one or more rioters purposely called multiple Waymo vehicles to Arcadia and Alameda streets, where they slashed the vehicles’ tires, broke the windows, and wrote anti-ICE messages on them.
At around 5 PM on Sunday, the Waymo vehicles were set on fire:
With the ongoing protests, the fire department couldn’t get access to the vehicles and they eventually completely burned down:
Waymo is believed to be operating a fleet of about 100 self-driving cars in the Los Angeles area. Therefore, a significant percentage of the fleet was burned down today.
The company completes over 120,000 rides per week in California, but it operates a bigger fleet in the Bay Area and covers a big service area than in LA.
Waymo shouldn’t have too many issues replenishing its fleet, considering it recently acquired over 2,000 Jaguar I-Pace electric vehicles to more than double its entire fleet over the next year.
The company currently operates over 1,500 vehicles across San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Austin.
With a high utilization rate, the relatively small fleet has already taken significant market shares of those ride-hailing markets. It is estimated that Waymo accounts for approximately 20% of the ride-hailing market in San Francisco.
The new vehicles are going to enable Waymo to expand into new markets.
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Environment
‘Bitcoin Family’ hides crypto codes etched onto metal cards on four continents after recent kidnappings
The Taihuttus on a ski trip to Sierra Nevada in southern Spain. They sold everything they owned in 2017 to bet on bitcoin — and now travel full-time as a family of five.
Didi Taihuttu
A wave of high-profile kidnappings targeting cryptocurrency executives has rattled the industry — and prompted a quiet security revolution among some of its most visible evangelists.
Didi Taihuttu, patriarch of the so-called “Bitcoin Family,” said he overhauled the family’s entire security setup after a string of threats.
The Taihuttus — who sold everything they owned in 2017, from their house to their shoes, to go all-in on bitcoin when it was trading around $900 — have long lived on the outer edge of crypto ideology. They travel full-time with their three daughters and remain entirely unbanked.
Over the past eight months, he said, the family ditched hardware wallets in favor of a hybrid system: Part analog, part digital, with seed phrases encrypted, split, and stored either through blockchain-based encryption services or hidden across four continents.
“We have changed everything,” Taihuttu told CNBC on a call from Phuket, Thailand. “Even if someone held me at gunpoint, I can’t give them more than what’s on my wallet on my phone. And that’s not a lot.”
CNBC first reported on the family’s unconventional storage system in 2022, when Taihuttu described hiding hardware wallets across multiple continents — in places ranging from rental apartments in Europe to self-storage units in South America.
The Taihuttu family dressed up for Halloween in Phuket, Thailand, where they recently moved homes after receiving disturbing messages pinpointing their location from YouTube videos.
Didi Taihuttu
As physical attacks on crypto holders become more frequent, even they are rethinking their exposure.
This week, Moroccan police arrested a 24-year-old suspected of orchestrating a series of brutal kidnappings targeting crypto executives.
One victim, the father of a crypto millionaire, was allegedly held for days in a house south of Paris — and reportedly had a finger severed during the ordeal.
In a separate case earlier this year, a co-founder of French wallet firm Ledger and his wife were abducted from their home in central France in a ransom scheme that also targeted another Ledger executive.
Last month in New York, authorities said, a 28-year-old Italian tourist was kidnapped and tortured for 17 days in a Manhattan apartment by attackers trying to extract his bitcoin password — shocking him with wires, beating him with a gun, and strapping an Apple AirTag around his neck to track his movements.
The common thread: The pursuit of crypto credentials that enable instant, irreversible transfers of virtual assets.
“It is definitely frightening to see a lot of these kidnappings happen,” said JP Richardson, CEO of crypto wallet company Exodus. He urged users to take security into their own hands by choosing self-custody, storing larger sums on hardware wallets, and — for those holding significant assets — exploring multi-signature wallets, a setup typically used by institutions.
Richardson also recommended spreading funds across different wallet types and avoiding large balances in hot wallets to reduce risk without sacrificing flexibility.
That rising sense of vulnerability is fueling a new demand for physical protection with insurance firms now racing to offer kidnap and ransom (K&R) policies tailored to crypto holders.
But Taihuttu isn’t waiting for corporate solutions. He’s opted for complete decentralization — of not just his finances, but his personal risk profile.
As the family prepares to return to Europe from Thailand, safety has become a constant topic of conversation.
“We’ve been talking about it a lot as a family,” Taihuttu said. “My kids read the news, too — especially that story in France, where the daughter of a CEO was almost kidnapped on the street.”
Now, he said, his daughters are asking difficult questions: What if someone tries to kidnap us? What’s the plan?
One of the steel plates the Taihuttu family uses to store part of their bitcoin seed phrase. Didi etched it by hand using a hammer and letter punch — part of a decentralized storage system spread across four continents.
Didi Taihuttu
Though the girls carry only small amounts of crypto in their personal wallets, the family has decided to avoid France entirely.
“We got a little bit famous in a niche market — but that niche is becoming a really big market now,” Taihuttu said. “And I think we’ll see more and more of these robberies. So yeah, we’re definitely going to skip France.”
Even in Thailand, Taihuttu recently stopped posting travel updates and filming at home after receiving disturbing messages from strangers who claimed to have identified his location from YouTube vlogs.
“We stayed in a very beautiful house for six months — then I started getting emails from people who figured out which house it was. They warned me to be careful, told me not to leave my kids alone,” he said. “So we moved. And now we don’t film anything at all.”
“It’s a strange world at the moment,” he said. “So we’re taking our own precautions — and when it comes to wallets, we’re now completely hardware wallet-less. We don’t use any hardware wallets anymore.”
To throw off would-be attackers, Didi Taihuttu encrypts select words from each 24-word seed phrase — then splits the phrases into four sets of six and hides them around the world.
Didi Taihuttu
The family’s new system involves splitting a single 24-word bitcoin seed phrase — the cryptographic key that unlocks access to their crypto holdings — into four sets of six words, each stored in a different geographic location. Some are kept digitally through blockchain-based encryption platforms, while others are etched by hand into fireproof steel plates using a hammer and letter punch, then hidden in physical locations across four continents.
“Even if someone finds 18 of the 24 words, they can’t do anything,” Taihuttu explained.
On top of that, he’s added a layer of personal encryption, swapping out select words to throw off would-be attackers. The method is simple, but effective.
“You only need to remember which ones you changed,” he said.
Part of the reason for ditching hardware wallets, Taihuttu said, was a growing mistrust of third-party devices. Concerns about backdoors and remote access features — including a controversial update by Ledger in 2023 — prompted the family to abandon physical hardware altogether in favor of encrypted paper and steel backups.
While the family still holds some crypto in “hot” wallets — for daily spending or to run their algorithmic trading strategy — those funds are protected by multi-signature approvals, which require multiple parties to sign off before a transaction can be executed.
The Taihuttus use Safe — formerly Gnosis Safe — for ether and other altcoins, and similarly layered setups for bitcoin stored on centralized platforms like Bybit.
Didi Taihuttu during a recent visit to Sierra Nevada, Spain. The family’s lifestyle — unbanked, nomadic, and all-in on bitcoin — makes them outliers even in the crypto world.
Didi Taihuttu
About 65% of the family’s crypto is locked in cold storage across four continents — a decentralized system Taihuttu prefers to centralized vaults like the Swiss Alps bunker used by Coinbase-owned Xapo. Those facilities may offer physical protection and inheritance services, but Taihuttu said they require too much trust.
“What happens if one of those companies goes bankrupt? Will I still have access?” he said. “You’re putting your capital back in someone else’s hands.”
Instead, Taihuttu holds his own keys — hidden across the globe. He can top up the wallets remotely with new deposits, but accessing them would require at least one international trip, depending on which fragments of the seed phrase are needed. The funds, he added, are intended as a long-term pension to be accessed only if bitcoin hits $1 million — a milestone he’s targeting for 2033.
The shift toward multiparty protections extends beyond just multi-signature. Multi-party computation, or MPC, is gaining traction as a more advanced security model.
Didi, Romaine, and their three daughters live largely off-grid, managing crypto through decentralized exchanges, algorithmic trading bots, and a globally distributed cold storage system.
Didi Taihuttu
Instead of storing private keys in one place — a vulnerability known as a “single point of compromise” — MPC splits a key into encrypted shares distributed across multiple parties. Transactions can only go through when a threshold number of those parties approve, sharply reducing the risk of theft or unauthorized access.
Multi-signature wallets require several parties to approve a transaction. MPC takes that further by cryptographically splitting the private key itself, ensuring that no single individual ever holds the full key — not even their own complete share.
The shift comes amid renewed scrutiny of centralized crypto platforms like Coinbase, which recently disclosed a data breach affecting tens of thousands of customers.
Taihuttu, for his part, says 80% of his trading now happens on decentralized exchanges like Apex — a peer-to-peer platform that allows users to set buy and sell orders without relinquishing custody of their funds, marking a return to crypto’s original ethos.
While he declined to reveal his total holdings, Taihuttu did share his goal for the current bull cycle: a $100 million net worth, with 60% still held in bitcoin. The rest is a mix of ether, layer-1 tokens like solana, link, sui, and a growing number of AI and education-focused startups — including his own platform offering blockchain and life-skills courses for kids.
Lately, he’s also considering stepping back from the spotlight.
“It’s really my passion to create content. It’s really what I love to do every day,” he said. “But if it’s not safe anymore for my daughters … I really need to think about them.”
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