US im­ports of crude oil and pe­tro­le­um prod­ucts from Trinidad and To­ba­go rose to an av­er­age 52,500 bar­rels per day (b/d) in the sec­ond quar­ter of 2026, the high­est quar­ter­ly rate since the third quar­ter of 2021.

Cal­cu­la­tions based on US En­er­gy In­for­ma­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion da­ta show that the Q2 2026 av­er­age was about 56 per cent high­er than the 33,600 b/d record­ed in the same quar­ter of 2025. It was al­so about 67 per cent above the 31,500 b/d record­ed in the first quar­ter of 2026.

The Unit­ed States im­port­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4.78 mil­lion bar­rels of crude oil and pe­tro­le­um prod­ucts from T&T be­tween April and June. Month­ly im­ports av­er­aged 55,000 b/d in April, 35,000 b/d in May and 69,000 b/d in June.

The in­crease was dri­ven main­ly by crude oil. EIA da­ta show crude im­ports from T&T av­er­ag­ing 53,000 b/d in April, 34,000 b/d in May and 69,000 b/d in June. By com­par­i­son, crude im­ports av­er­aged 33,000 b/d in Jan­u­ary, 36,000 b/d in Feb­ru­ary and 16,000 b/d in March.

The high­er US im­ports do not ap­pear to re­flect a com­pa­ra­ble in­crease in do­mes­tic oil pro­duc­tion. Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries da­ta show crude oil and con­den­sate out­put at 54,003 b/d in Jan­u­ary, 55,410 b/d in Feb­ru­ary and 53,811 b/d in March. Pro­duc­tion reached 55,808 b/d in April, then fell to 52,870 b/d in May and 51,525 b/d in June. The Jan­u­ary–June 2026 av­er­age was 53,882 b/d.

To­tal crude ex­ports from Trinidad and To­ba­go were about 4.9 mil­lion bar­rels in Q1 and 5.1 mil­lion bar­rels in Q2, ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry. These to­tals in­clude Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um’s Mo­lo crude, bpTT’s Ga­le­o­ta Mix and a May ex­port of 498,156 bar­rels of Peren­co’s Ca­lyp­so crude.

US crude im­ports from T&T were about 2.5 mil­lion bar­rels in Q1, equiv­a­lent to rough­ly half of the coun­try’s to­tal crude ex­ports, and 4.7 mil­lion bar­rels in Q2, equiv­a­lent to about 92 per cent of Q2 ex­ports. US crude im­ports in April and June ex­ceed­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go’s to­tal crude ex­ports in those months, con­sis­tent with dif­fer­ences be­tween car­go de­par­ture and ar­rival dates.

Tak­en to­geth­er, the da­ta sug­gest that the rise in US im­ports re­flect­ed changes in car­go des­ti­na­tions and ar­rival tim­ing more than a sharp in­crease in do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion. EIA da­ta show that Gulf Coast re­finer­ies re­ceived 1.10 mil­lion bar­rels of Trinidad and To­ba­go crude in April and 1.05 mil­lion bar­rels in May, while April al­so in­clud­ed 496,000 bar­rels processed on the US West Coast.

The trade re­la­tion­ship was al­so ac­tive dur­ing the quar­ter.

In May, the Min­istry of En­er­gy said ex­ec­u­tives from Chevron, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um and Paria Fu­el Trad­ing met to dis­cuss in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties, in­clud­ing sup­ply and trad­ing. The Min­istry said Chevron high­light­ed its ex­ist­ing com­mer­cial part­ner­ships with Her­itage and Paria and ex­pressed in­ter­est in fur­ther col­lab­o­ra­tion.

The meet­ing does not es­tab­lish a di­rect cause for the in­crease in US im­ports, but it pro­vides ad­di­tion­al con­text for the trad­ing ac­tiv­i­ty dur­ing the pe­ri­od.

The sec­ond-quar­ter av­er­age was vir­tu­al­ly lev­el with Q3 2021, when im­ports av­er­aged about 52,530 b/d, the last time quar­ter­ly im­ports were this high.

Cal­cu­lat­ed from EIA month­ly vol­umes, Q2 2026 was the strongest quar­ter in near­ly five years.