Since the clo­sure of the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery in 2018, Trinidad and To­ba­go has tran­si­tioned to ex­port­ing all of its do­mes­tic crude oil pro­duc­tion to the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket. This shift re­sult­ed in an im­me­di­ate and sig­nif­i­cant spike in ex­port vol­umes.

Cur­rent­ly, the coun­try ex­ports three pri­ma­ry blends, bpTT’s Ga­le­o­ta Mix, Wood­side’s Ca­lyp­so Crude, and Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um’s Mo­lo Crude.

To­geth­er, these rep­re­sent the na­tion’s to­tal pro­duc­tion of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50,000 bar­rels per day (bpd). In con­trast, pri­or to 2018, ex­ports av­er­aged on­ly 30,000 bpd, con­sist­ing main­ly of Ga­le­o­ta and Ca­lyp­so crudes, while Her­itage’s Mo­lo Crude was re­fined lo­cal­ly.

De­spite the ab­solute in­crease in ex­port vol­umes post-2018, the over­all trend re­flects a per­sis­tent de­cline dri­ven by falling do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion. This down­ward tra­jec­to­ry in out­put was ev­i­dent even be­fore the re­fin­ery’s clo­sure and con­tin­ues to lim­it the coun­try’s for­eign ex­change (Forex) earn­ing po­ten­tial.

Com­pound­ing this vol­ume de­cline is a cool­ing glob­al mar­ket. Crude prices are cur­rent­ly low, with WTI at US$58 and Brent at US$63. These fig­ures sit well be­low the $100 peaks seen in 2022, con­tin­u­ing a down­ward price trend that fur­ther pres­sures the en­er­gy sec­tor’s rev­enue gen­er­a­tion.