The fu­ture of Methanex Corp’s Trinidad op­er­a­tions has gone fur­ther in­to lim­bo af­ter the com­pa­ny re­port­ed load­ing its fi­nal methanol car­go aboard the Lumphi­ni Park ves­sel on Mon­day, Au­gust 17.

Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and pres­i­dent of Methanex Trinidad Ltd, Col­in Bain, con­firmed to the Guardian on Thurs­day that the ship­ment was the last ex­pect­ed ex­port from the com­pa­ny’s op­er­a­tions in the coun­try since it shut down the Ti­tan plant in June.

Ship track­ing had stat­ed the ves­sel had left Trinidad for a port in Bahia, Brazil, but Bain could not con­firm the des­ti­na­tion when con­tact­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny’s lat­est fi­nan­cial re­port, it was stat­ed with re­gard to its Trinidad op­er­a­tions, “In Trinidad, the Ti­tan plant pro­duced 121,000 tonnes in the sec­ond quar­ter of 2026 com­pared to 215,000 tonnes in the first quar­ter of 2026. Pro­duc­tion was low­er in the sec­ond quar­ter as the plant ex­pe­ri­enced dis­rup­tions from un­planned out­ages in the quar­ter. On Ju­ly 15, the plant ceased op­er­a­tions, and we have com­menced the process of in­def­i­nite­ly idling the fa­cil­i­ty.”

The in­def­i­nite idling of Ti­tan Methanol is con­nect­ed to T&T’s on­go­ing nat­ur­al gas sup­ply short­age, which has forced sev­er­al petro­chem­i­cal pro­duc­ers at the Point Lisas to idle plants, cut pro­duc­tion and rene­go­ti­ate sup­ply con­tracts as out­put from the coun­try’s ma­ture off­shore gas fields has con­sis­tent­ly de­clined.

Methanex, the world’s largest methanol pro­duc­er, had con­firmed in June that it would in­def­i­nite­ly idle its Ti­tan plant, which has an 860,000-tonne-per-year ca­pac­i­ty, af­ter fail­ing to agree on a new gas con­tract be­fore its ex­ist­ing sup­ply agree­ment ex­pired. The com­pa­ny said it had en­gaged with both the gov­ern­ment and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny pri­or to mak­ing the de­ci­sion.

Pres­i­dent and CEO of the Van­cou­ver-based com­pa­ny Rich Sum­n­er said then, “Struc­tural­ly tight gas sup­ply and de­mand bal­ances in Trinidad and To­ba­go are mak­ing op­er­a­tions com­mer­cial­ly un­vi­able.”

NGC re­spond­ed then, stat­ing gas sup­ply vol­umes were not the is­sue in dis­cus­sions with Methanex and said the com­pa­ny had been of­fered the same con­tract­ed vol­ume un­der the ex­pir­ing agree­ment, with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of ad­di­tion­al sup­plies if re­quired. In­stead, NGC said the dis­agree­ment cen­tred on price. NGC said Methanex sought a gas price that was sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er than that con­tained in the ex­pir­ing con­tract and be­low NGC’s own ac­qui­si­tion cost.

“The re­quest­ed price was al­so be­low NGC’s ac­qui­si­tion cost of gas and be­low the rates ap­plied to NGC’s Light In­dus­tri­al and Com­mer­cial cus­tomers, as well as to com­pa­nies with­in the NGC Group.”

Ti­tan was Methanex’s last op­er­at­ing plant in Trinidad. Its larg­er At­las methanol fa­cil­i­ty, in which Methanex holds a 63.1 per cent eco­nom­ic in­ter­est, was pre­vi­ous­ly idled be­cause of in­suf­fi­cient gas sup­plies and re­mains in a pre­served state. To­geth­er, the two fa­cil­i­ties had the ca­pac­i­ty to pro­duce about 2.5 mil­lion tonnes of methanol an­nu­al­ly.

Methanol ex­ports had been sig­nif­i­cant to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s econ­o­my, par­tic­u­lar­ly af­ter the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. —PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER