Am­mo­nia out­put from the six Trinidad and To­ba­go plants that re­port­ed pro­duc­tion rose 9.7 per cent in the first quar­ter of 2026, re­cov­er­ing part of the vol­ume lost when Nu­trien shut its Point Lisas op­er­a­tions.

Those plants pro­duced 813,652 met­ric tonnes (MT), up from 741,397 MT a year ear­li­er, an in­crease of 72,255 MT.

Mea­sured against the coun­try’s full first-quar­ter 2025 to­tal of 1,096,475 MT, how­ev­er, out­put was down 25.8 per cent. Nu­trien’s four am­mo­nia plants were shut down dur­ing the quar­ter. In the first three months of 2025 they turned out 355,078 MT.

Pro­duc­tion was rel­a­tive­ly steady in Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary be­fore ris­ing to 282,283 MT in March, the strongest month of the quar­ter and a marked im­prove­ment from the end of 2025.

Trin­gen II ac­count­ed for most of the year-on-year gain. Its out­put climbed 72.3 per cent to 134,221 MT from 77,908 MT, an in­crease of 56,313 MT.

Point Lisas Ni­tro­gen was the largest sin­gle pro­duc­er dur­ing the quar­ter, with out­put ris­ing 18.1 per cent from a year ear­li­er. Ni­tro­gen 2000 Un­lim­it­ed and Trin­gen I al­so record­ed high­er pro­duc­tion ris­ing by 9.8 per cent and 10.6 per cent re­spec­tive­ly.

Two plants moved the oth­er way. Caribbean Ni­tro­gen Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed pro­duced 93,508 MT, down 23.7 per cent from 122,477 MT. Out­put from the AUM am­mo­nia plant eased 3 per cent to 153,086 MT.

Sev­er­al of the plants se­cured new gas sup­ply dur­ing and af­ter the quar­ter. The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go com­plet­ed a con­tract with Point Lisas Ni­tro­gen Lim­it­ed in March guar­an­tee­ing con­tin­ued nat­ur­al gas sup­ply to the plant, and on March 16 ex­e­cut­ed a gas sales con­tract with Trinidad Ni­tro­gen Com­pa­ny, op­er­a­tor of Trin­gen I and Trin­gen II. In May the state com­pa­ny said it had re­cent­ly con­clud­ed agree­ments cov­er­ing Caribbean Ni­tro­gen Com­pa­ny and Ni­tro­gen 2000 Un­lim­it­ed.

Ex­ports how­ev­er, fell. Trinidad and To­ba­go shipped 671,676 MT of am­mo­nia in the first quar­ter, against 866,022 MT a year ear­li­er, a de­cline of 22.4 per cent. Ex­clud­ing Nu­trien, ex­ports were 4% high­er, up from 645,702 MT. Nu­trien ex­port­ed noth­ing in the quar­ter af­ter ship­ping 220,320 MT in the first three months of 2025.

The coun­try re­mains a sig­nif­i­cant sup­pli­er to the Unit­ed States. Reuters, cit­ing Unit­ed States Ge­o­log­i­cal Sur­vey da­ta, re­port­ed that Trinidad and To­ba­go was the sec­ond-largest source of US am­mo­nia im­ports in 2024, ac­count­ing for 37 per cent of the to­tal.

Nu­trien com­plet­ed a con­trolled shut­down of its Trinidad op­er­a­tions on Oc­to­ber 23, 2025, cit­ing port ac­cess re­stric­tions im­posed by the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion and the ab­sence of a re­li­able and eco­nom­ic nat­ur­al gas sup­ply. The com­pa­ny re­port­ed safe-mode costs tied to the shut­down in its sec­ond-quar­ter 2026 re­sults and said it re­mained on track to “so­lid­i­fy the op­ti­mal path” for the fa­cil­i­ty dur­ing 2026.

The Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries re­ports AUM-NH3 pro­duc­tion on a gross rather than net ba­sis. Fig­ures shown in red or ital­ics in the Min­istry’s bul­letin are pre­lim­i­nary.