Methanol pro­duc­tion re­mains a crit­i­cal com­po­nent of T&T’s down­stream en­er­gy sec­tor, con­tribut­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly to man­u­fac­tur­ing out­put, for­eign ex­change earn­ings, and em­ploy­ment. Lever­ag­ing its nat­ur­al gas re­sources, the coun­try has es­tab­lished it­self as one of the world’s lead­ing ex­porters of methanol, with pro­duc­tion large­ly ori­ent­ed to­ward in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets. As a val­ue-added, gas-based in­dus­try, methanol plays an im­por­tant role in sup­port­ing in­dus­tri­al ac­tiv­i­ty be­yond the ex­trac­tive in­dus­try.

At present, there are three methanol pro­duc­ers and eight methanol fa­cil­i­ties in Trinidad—six of which are cur­rent­ly op­er­a­tional. Pro­duc­tion is con­cen­trat­ed at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, where es­tab­lished in­fra­struc­ture and ac­cess to nat­ur­al gas have sup­port­ed large-scale op­er­a­tions for sev­er­al decades.

The first methanol plant start­ed up at Point Lisas in 1984, and since then, six oth­er fa­cil­i­ties have been built there. The most re­cent plant, the Caribbean Gas Chem­i­cal Lim­it­ed (CG­CL) fa­cil­i­ty, was built in 2020 and is lo­cat­ed in La Brea. In 2025, the main pro­duc­ers were Pro­man, Methanex and CG­CL.

His­tor­i­cal pro­duc­tion da­ta il­lus­trate that methanol out­put has fluc­tu­at­ed over the past decade, with pe­ri­ods of both re­cov­ery and de­cline. As shown in Fig­ure 1, pro­duc­tion lev­els be­tween 2014 and 2024 re­flect­ed vari­abil­i­ty linked to plant util­i­sa­tion, main­te­nance cy­cles, and—more crit­i­cal­ly—the avail­abil­i­ty of nat­ur­al gas feed­stock.

Methanol pro­duc­tion in 2025 is es­ti­mat­ed to be low­er rel­a­tive to ear­li­er years as sev­er­al fa­cil­i­ties were of­fline to­wards the end of 2024 and in­to 2025.

De­spite the re­silience of the pro­duc­tion base, nat­ur­al gas sup­ply con­straints con­tin­ue to rep­re­sent the most sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge fac­ing methanol pro­duc­ers in T&T.

Pe­ri­od­ic gas short­falls have re­sult­ed in re­duced util­i­sa­tion rates across down­stream fa­cil­i­ties, af­fect­ing methanol out­put and ex­port vol­umes.

De­clines in nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion and sub­se­quent avail­abil­i­ty have led to plants be­ing idled in T&T, in­clud­ing Methanex’s At­las plant—their largest fa­cil­i­ty in T&T and Pro­man’s TTMC1 fa­cil­i­ty.

Pro­duc­ers re­main ex­posed to glob­al methanol price cy­cles, with rev­enues in­flu­enced by in­ter­na­tion­al de­mand con­di­tions and com­pe­ti­tion from low­er-cost pro­duc­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly those ben­e­fit­ting from shale gas de­vel­op­ments in the US and large-scale ca­pac­i­ty ex­pan­sions in the Mid­dle East.

At the same time, emerg­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties are re­shap­ing the out­look for methanol be­yond its tra­di­tion­al role as a chem­i­cal feed­stock.

Glob­al­ly, methanol is in­creas­ing­ly be­ing con­sid­ered as an al­ter­na­tive fu­el for trans­port, par­tic­u­lar­ly with­in the mar­itime sec­tor, as ship­ping com­pa­nies seek to com­ply with tight­en­ing emis­sions reg­u­la­tions.

Re­gion­al­ly, Methanex and Pro­man have sup­port­ed this tran­si­tion by demon­strat­ing methanol’s prac­ti­cal­i­ty and safe­ty. Methanex com­plet­ed the Caribbean’s first ship to ship methanol bunker­ing demon­stra­tion in 2024 and in part­ner­ship with Na­tion­al En­er­gy and The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, con­clud­ed a three-year M15 gaso­line blend pi­lot in 2025, with pos­i­tive re­sults.

Pro­man has sim­i­lar­ly em­pha­sised methanol’s po­ten­tial in ma­rine fu­el and pow­er gen­er­a­tion ap­pli­ca­tions, re­flect­ing the broad­er in­dus­try trend of ex­pand­ing methanol’s role with­in the glob­al en­er­gy tran­si­tion

These op­por­tu­ni­ties were fur­ther un­der­scored dur­ing dis­cus­sions at the re­cent T&T En­er­gy Con­fer­ence, in­clud­ing a ses­sion fo­cused on col­lab­o­ra­tion to cre­ate a low-car­bon ma­rine bunker­ing in­dus­try in the Caribbean. The ses­sion high­light­ed grow­ing in­ter­est in al­ter­na­tive ma­rine fu­els, such as methanol, and the im­por­tance of re­gion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion, in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment, and reg­u­la­to­ry align­ment.

Giv­en T&T’s strate­gic lo­ca­tion along ma­jor ship­ping routes and its ex­ist­ing port and en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture, the de­vel­op­ment of methanol bunker­ing fa­cil­i­ties has been iden­ti­fied as a po­ten­tial path­way for ex­pand­ing the coun­try’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in emerg­ing mar­itime fu­el mar­kets.

Methanol pro­duc­tion in T&T re­mains strate­gi­cal­ly im­por­tant, both as a source of ex­port earn­ings and as a plat­form for ac­cess­ing new mar­kets linked to low­er-car­bon en­er­gy so­lu­tions. Longer-term op­por­tu­ni­ties ex­ist to mon­e­tise methanol through ex­pand­ed fu­el ap­pli­ca­tions, in­clud­ing ma­rine bunker­ing and pow­er gen­er­a­tion.

Re­al­is­ing these op­por­tu­ni­ties will re­quire co­or­di­nat­ed ac­tion across the en­er­gy val­ue chain, com­bin­ing up­stream gas de­vel­op­ment, down­stream in­vest­ment, and sup­port­ive pol­i­cy frame­works to en­hance re­silience and com­pet­i­tive­ness.