Dis­rup­tion in the Strait of Hor­muz is be­gin­ning to show up not on­ly in en­er­gy prices but al­so in phys­i­cal com­mod­i­ty flows, and this could car­ry mixed im­pli­ca­tions for T&T.

While crude oil flows have drawn the most at­ten­tion, the dis­rup­tion is al­so af­fect­ing oth­er com­modi­ties mov­ing through the Gulf, in­clud­ing LNG and fer­tilis­er-re­lat­ed prod­ucts.

The World Trade Or­gan­i­sa­tion’s new Strait of Hor­muz Trade Track­er shows out­bound traf­fic from the Per­sian Gulf, tracked by AIS, com­ing to “al­most a com­plete halt” af­ter Iran’s March 2, 2026 an­nounce­ment of the clo­sure of the Strait, with si­mul­ta­ne­ous breaks in crude oil, LNG, and fer­tilis­er-re­lat­ed ship­ments at the end of Feb­ru­ary.

The WTO says the track­er cov­ers crude oil, nat­ur­al gas, fer­tilis­er-re­lat­ed prod­ucts (in­clud­ing sul­phur and am­mo­nia), and agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts.

This mat­ters be­cause the Strait of Hor­muz re­mains one of the world’s most crit­i­cal en­er­gy choke­points.

Reuters de­scribed a halt to oil and gas ship­ments through the Strait as a night­mare sce­nario for the glob­al en­er­gy sys­tem, while broad­er warn­ings from in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies have be­come more point­ed as the dis­rup­tion has dragged on.

By April 1, the im­pact was be­com­ing more vis­i­ble in phys­i­cal trade flows, not just in price move­ments or mar­ket sen­ti­ment.

New trade da­ta sug­gest buy­ers are al­ready mov­ing to re­place dis­rupt­ed Mid­dle East sup­ply.

Reuters re­port­ed that US fu­el ex­ports hit a record in March, with ship­ments to Eu­rope up 27 per cent, ex­ports to Asia more than dou­bling, and vol­umes to Africa surg­ing 169 per cent as buy­ers sought al­ter­na­tives.

US LNG ex­ports al­so reached a record 11.7 mil­lion met­ric tonnes in March, with Asia more than dou­bling its im­ports of U.S. LNG, while Eu­rope re­mained the top buy­er. This re­in­forces the point that this is not just a crude oil sto­ry, but one af­fect­ing a wider bas­ket of en­er­gy com­modi­ties and trade flows.

For T&T, the im­me­di­ate at­trac­tion is on the ex­port side.

The coun­try’s gas-based in­dus­tri­al sec­tor is built around LNG and petro­chem­i­cals, which gen­er­ate sub­stan­tial rev­enue for the gov­ern­ment and are crit­i­cal for for­eign ex­change gen­er­a­tion.

The LNG an­gle is es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant.

The WTO track­er’s LNG chart shows out­bound ship­ments through Hor­muz ac­tive through much of Feb­ru­ary be­fore col­laps­ing in­to March, re­in­forc­ing the idea that the mar­ket is deal­ing with an in­ter­rup­tion in re­al car­go move­ments, not sim­ply a spike in sen­ti­ment.

For T&T, that cre­ates a plau­si­ble open­ing: when one of the world’s most im­por­tant LNG cor­ri­dors is dis­rupt­ed, al­ter­na­tive sup­pli­ers be­come more strate­gi­cal­ly rel­e­vant.

This does not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly mean Trinidad would sell dra­mat­i­cal­ly more car­goes, but it strength­ens the case that its ex­ist­ing LNG ex­ports could be­come more valu­able in a tighter mar­ket.

Still, the coun­try’s abil­i­ty to ful­ly ben­e­fit is con­strained. Reuters re­port­ed in Jan­u­ary that At­lantic LNG will be­gin re­mov­ing Train 1 from op­er­a­tions this year be­cause of gas short­ages and in­ef­fi­cien­cy, and in Feb­ru­ary that Train 4 is due to shut for 45 to 50 days in May and June for ma­jor main­te­nance and re­pairs.

These de­vel­op­ments sug­gest that even if in­ter­na­tion­al prices rise or buy­ers seek al­ter­na­tive sup­ply, T&T may not have the spare flex­i­bil­i­ty to cap­ture all the up­side.

The coun­try may be com­mer­cial­ly rel­e­vant in a tighter mar­ket, but it is not op­er­at­ing from a po­si­tion of abun­dant feed gas.

That up­side, how­ev­er, is de­vel­op­ing with­in a wider glob­al shock. UNC­TAD warned on April 1 that the Hor­muz dis­rup­tion was deep­en­ing strain across trade, prices, and fi­nance.

The IEA has al­so be­come more ex­plic­it about the scale of the shock. On March 11, IEA mem­ber coun­tries agreed to make 400 mil­lion bar­rels of oil from emer­gency re­serves avail­able to the mar­ket. This is the agency’s largest-ever col­lec­tive stock re­lease, and it was done in re­sponse to dis­rup­tions stem­ming from the Mid­dle East con­flict.

The IEA’s 2026 En­er­gy Cri­sis Pol­i­cy Re­sponse Track­er, last up­dat­ed on April 2, shows that gov­ern­ments are not treat­ing this as a short-lived mar­ket scare: coun­tries are al­ready rolling out fu­el tax cuts, sub­si­dies, price caps, re­mote work­ing mea­sures, pub­lic trans­port sup­port, and oth­er con­ser­va­tion steps to shield con­sumers and re­duce de­mand pres­sure as the cri­sis un­folds.

There is al­so a down­side at home.

T&T re­mains a sig­nif­i­cant im­porter of re­fined pe­tro­le­um prod­ucts. Ac­cord­ing to the Ob­ser­va­to­ry of Eco­nom­ic Com­plex­i­ty, the coun­try im­port­ed US$1.43 bil­lion of re­fined pe­tro­le­um in 2024, mak­ing it one of its largest im­port cat­e­gories, while Min­istry of En­er­gy bul­letins con­tin­ue to track re­fined prod­uct im­ports by Paria.

This means high­er freight costs, el­e­vat­ed oil prices, or pro­longed ship­ping dis­rup­tion could feed in­to the do­mes­tic econ­o­my through fu­el, trans­port, and busi­ness costs, even if ex­porters ben­e­fit from stronger in­ter­na­tion­al pric­ing.

This leaves T&T in a fa­mil­iar po­si­tion: po­ten­tial­ly ad­van­taged as an en­er­gy ex­porter but still ex­posed as an im­porter in a volatile glob­al mar­ket.

The best lo­cal read­ing of the Hor­muz dis­rup­tion is there­fore not as a straight­for­ward wind­fall, but as a mixed sto­ry.

Tighter LNG and petro­chem­i­cal mar­kets could im­prove the com­mer­cial val­ue of the coun­try’s ex­ports, yet lo­cal gas con­straints and the risk of high­er im­port­ed fu­el and ship­ping costs could lim­it how much of that up­side reach­es the wider econ­o­my.

So, while T&T may ben­e­fit from tighter mar­kets in LNG and petro­chem­i­cals, the same dis­rup­tion is al­so am­pli­fy­ing the glob­al eco­nom­ic risks that can even­tu­al­ly weigh on de­mand.