T&T is now im­port­ing more oil as do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion has fall­en and most of the im­ports are com­ing from Rus­sia.

Lat­est fig­ures show crude im­ports reach­ing 102,703 bar­rels/day in the first nine months of 2016, a 31 per cent in­crease over the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2015. The bulk of the im­ports was crude oil from Rus­sia, ac­count­ing for close to 50,000 bar­rels/day. Colom­bian Vas­co­nia grade had pre­vi­ous­ly ac­count­ed for the high­est im­ports but none was im­port­ed in 2016.

The crude oil im­ports are to com­ple­ment do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion to sup­ply the 168,000 b/d Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery owned by state-owned Petrotrin.

Da­ta shows that from Jan­u­ary to Sep­tem­ber, T&T pro­duced 71,234 bar­rels/days which was 10.7 per cent less than in 2015. This coun­try ex­port­ed 26,555 bar­rels/day of do­mes­tic crude, main­ly Ga­le­o­ta Mix, be­tween Jan­u­ary and Sep­tem­ber, which is 17.8 per cent less than the cor­re­spond­ing 2015 pe­ri­od.

Da­ta al­so shows a par­al­lel de­cline in do­mes­tic gas pro­duc­tion.