March closed out the first quar­ter of 2026 with Trinidad and To­ba­go’s strongest month­ly methanol pro­duc­tion of the pe­ri­od, com­plet­ing three con­sec­u­tive months of growth. To­tal out­put reached 1.13 mil­lion met­ric tonnes.

Pro­duc­tion was 2.4 per cent be­low the 1.16 mil­lion met­ric tonnes pro­duced a year ear­li­er. The plant-lev­el fig­ures, how­ev­er, show that four fa­cil­i­ties in­creased pro­duc­tion, off­set­ting much of the de­cline at M5000 and TTMC II.

Ex­ports, how­ev­er, moved in the oth­er di­rec­tion. MEEI record­ed 1.15 mil­lion met­ric tonnes of methanol ex­ports dur­ing the quar­ter, an 8 per cent in­crease from the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2025.

M5000 re­mained the coun­try’s largest pro­duc­er, de­spite turn­ing out less methanol than it did a year ear­li­er. Caribbean Gas Chem­i­cal Ltd ranked sec­ond and record­ed a slight in­crease.

Ti­tan post­ed the strongest gain. Pro­duc­tion rose 57.5 per cent to 214,541 met­ric tonnes, while Methanol IV in­creased out­put by 27.5 per cent. Caribbean Methanol Com­pa­ny al­so im­proved, pro­duc­ing 16.2 per cent more than it did in the first quar­ter of 2025.

Methanex’s own re­sults put Ti­tan’s pro­duc­tion at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 215,000 met­ric tonnes, close­ly match­ing the min­istry’s fig­ure. The com­pa­ny re­port­ed that the plant op­er­at­ed at its list­ed quar­ter­ly ca­pac­i­ty. The com­par­i­son with 2025 al­so re­flects a low­er start­ing point, as an un­planned out­age af­fect­ed Ti­tan dur­ing the first quar­ter of last year.

At­las record­ed no pro­duc­tion in ei­ther pe­ri­od. Methanex idled the plant in mid-Sep­tem­ber 2024 when its 20-year nat­ur­al gas sup­ply agree­ment ex­pired. TTMC I is no longer in­clud­ed in the Min­istry’s ta­ble, hav­ing been idle since 2016.

Over­seas sales re­main cen­tral to the lo­cal methanol in­dus­try. OPIS, a Dow Jones com­pa­ny, re­port­ed in May that T&T was the largest methanol ex­porter in the Caribbean and South Amer­i­ca. West Eu­rope, main­land Chi­na and the Unit­ed States were among the coun­try’s lead­ing mar­kets.

By the sec­ond quar­ter, Ti­tan’s pro­duc­tion had fall­en to 121,000 met­ric tonnes fol­low­ing fur­ther un­planned out­ages. Methanex an­nounced on June 29, 2026, that it would in­def­i­nite­ly idle the plant af­ter the com­pa­ny and NGC failed to agree on a new nat­ur­al gas con­tract.

Al­though the ex­ist­ing con­tract was due to end in Sep­tem­ber, Ti­tan ceased op­er­a­tions on Ju­ly 15, 2026. Methanex has since be­gun plac­ing the 860,000-tonne-per-year fa­cil­i­ty in a pre­served state.

With At­las al­ready idle, Ti­tan’s clo­sure brought Methanex’s methanol pro­duc­tion in T&T to an end for now. The com­pa­ny has not an­nounced a com­plete with­draw­al from the coun­try. It con­tin­ues to pre­serve both fa­cil­i­ties, al­low­ing for a pos­si­ble restart if com­mer­cial con­di­tions im­prove.

Methanex said tight gas sup­ply and de­mand bal­ances had made its Trinidad op­er­a­tions com­mer­cial­ly un­vi­able. NGC said the vol­ume of gas on of­fer was not the stick­ing point.

The state com­pa­ny main­tained that it of­fered the same con­tract­ed vol­ume, with the op­tion of con­sid­er­ing an in­crease, but said the prin­ci­pal is­sue was pric­ing.

No time­line has been an­nounced for restart­ing Ti­tan or At­las. Methanex said it would con­tin­ue mon­i­tor­ing de­vel­op­ments in T&T and re­assess its po­si­tion over the com­ing years.

De­spite this change at Methanex, the first-quar­ter fig­ures showed that gains across sev­er­al plants kept na­tion­al methanol pro­duc­tion close to its year-ear­li­er lev­el, while ex­ports in­creased.

With Ti­tan now of­fline, at­ten­tion will shift to the re­main­ing pro­duc­ers and whether the stronger pro­duc­tion pace record­ed in March can be car­ried for­ward.