Methanol Import and Export Data to 2025, with a 2026 Monthly Update to August: EU Imports Fall 8% While Monthly Prices Jump 67%

Summary. EU27 imports of methanol from outside the bloc fell 7.9% to 5,638,602 tonnes in the twelve months to August 2026, from 6,118,656 tonnes a year earlier, while the average customs unit value rose 2.0% to 353 EUR per tonne. That average hides the real move: the unit value sat at 281–302 EUR/t for the seven months to March 2026, then broke upward to 363 EUR/t in April, 458 in May, 470 in July and 418 in August — a 67% jump from February to July. The trade map changed with it. Oman supplied 374,508 tonnes at 311 EUR/t in the earlier window and 14,794 tonnes at 594 EUR/t in the later one; Saudi Arabia fell 60.8% and Equatorial Guinea 92.9%. Norway (+226,318 t), Venezuela (+183,134 t) and Egypt (+73,805 t) took most of the gap, and the top five origins moved from 83.5% to 94.0%. Methanex’s European posted price went from 535 EUR/t for January–March 2026 to 850 and then 915, confirming the break independently. Exports fell 23.7% to 275,166 tonnes, more than half to the United Kingdom.

Data updated: 2026-10-18

Latest 12 months: monthly import and export volumes

The table covers 2025-09 to 2026-08, the most recent twelve complete months in Eurostat Comext dataset DS-045409, which carried EU27 extra-EU trade in HS 290511 through August 2026 and was last refreshed on 16 October 2026. HS 290511 is the single tariff line for methanol (methyl alcohol); extra-EU means the partner aggregate EXT_EU27_2020, so shipments between member states are excluded throughout.

Month	Imports (t)	Import value (EUR m)	Import unit value (EUR/t)	Exports (t)	Export unit value (EUR/t)
2025-09	513,334	150.8	294	8,121	617
2025-10	415,163	125.0	301	26,745	360
2025-11	459,175	135.0	294	18,105	396
2025-12	489,596	144.2	295	19,817	351
2026-01	401,911	121.3	302	30,976	328
2026-02	469,526	132.1	281	33,437	332
2026-03	493,094	143.5	291	39,635	353
2026-04	458,042	166.4	363	30,415	469
2026-05	435,175	199.2	458	22,695	644
2026-06	488,837	223.2	457	16,972	605
2026-07	507,147	238.2	470	14,329	602
2026-08	507,601	212.2	418	13,920	700
12-month total / weighted average	5,638,602	1,991.2	353	275,166	442

Source: Eurostat Comext DS-045409, EU27 extra-EU monthly trade in HS 290511. Unit value = value ÷ net weight.

April 2026 is the break: the import unit value steps from 291 to 363 EUR/t and never returns to its old range. Tonnage does not follow. Imports held between 401,911 and 513,334 tonnes in every month of the window, so the quantity line shows no shortage; what changed was the price paid for an almost unchanged flow, which points at the cost of the marginal barrel rather than the number of barrels.

The bill follows. April to August 2026 cost 1,039.2 million EUR for 2,396,802 tonnes, an average of 433.6 EUR/t; September 2025 to March 2026 cost 952.0 million EUR for 3,241,800 tonnes, an average of 293.7 EUR/t — a 47.7% step-up in the price of the same import book inside one reporting year.

Where the tonnes came from: the supplier map is rewritten

Origins are ranked by tonnage across the two twelve-month windows, with intra-EU partners and aggregate pseudo-codes excluded.

Origin	2024-09 to 2025-08 (t)	Unit value (EUR/t)	2025-09 to 2026-08 (t)	Unit value (EUR/t)	Change (t)	Share of latest
United States	2,003,556	336	2,001,907	328	−1,648	35.5%
Trinidad and Tobago	1,706,521	333	1,478,512	340	−228,009	26.2%
Egypt	652,378	340	726,183	405	+73,805	12.9%
Venezuela	371,516	365	554,651	348	+183,134	9.8%
Norway	310,261	377	536,579	390	+226,318	9.5%
Azerbaijan	243,237	427	162,855	412	−80,382	2.9%
Saudi Arabia	219,546	450	86,160	365	−133,386	1.5%
Oman	374,508	311	14,794	594	−359,714	0.3%
Equatorial Guinea	126,609	320	9,006	296	−117,602	0.2%
Algeria	40,594	373	10,572	405	−30,022	0.2%
China	5,170	334	30,866	314	+25,696	0.5%
Other origins	64,760	—	26,517	—	−38,243	0.5%
Extra-EU total	6,118,656	346	5,638,602	353	−480,054	100%

Source: Eurostat Comext DS-045409, EU27 extra-EU imports of HS 290511 by partner, summed over each window. Intra-EU partners and aggregate codes excluded.

The change column shows consolidation, not substitution. The two Atlantic suppliers that kept delivering — the United States at 2,001,907 tonnes and Trinidad and Tobago at 1,478,512 — hold 61.7% of the book between them. Around them, buyers rebuilt: Venezuela added 183,134 tonnes, Norway 226,318 and Egypt 73,805, while six smaller origins lost between 30,022 and 359,714 tonnes each. Oman’s fall is the extreme case at −96.0%, but Equatorial Guinea (−92.9%), Algeria (−73.9%) and Azerbaijan (−33.0%) moved the same way. The concentration measures say it in one line: the top five went from 83.5% to 94.0% and the Herfindahl index from 2,098 to 2,312.

Oman’s unit value is the tell. Its residual 14,794 tonnes cleared at 594 EUR/t, the highest of any origin in the table and 91% above its own 311 EUR/t a year earlier: marginal Gulf barrels in 2026 were not cheap barrels. Egypt went the other way, selling 11.3% more volume at 405 EUR/t, up 19.1% — a 12.9% share that makes it the third-largest origin; only Egypt and Norway combined higher volume with a higher unit value. Azerbaijan’s −33.0% is the one large move this data cannot explain, so no cause is assigned to it.

Price or mix? The decomposition

A shift toward dearer origins would raise the average without any origin becoming more expensive, so the two effects must be separated. Holding the earlier window’s origin weights fixed and applying the latest origin unit values gives 363 EUR/t against an actual 353 EUR/t: a price effect of about +17 EUR/t and a mix effect of about −10 EUR/t. Origins did become dearer, but the average rose less than the underlying prices, because the fastest-growing volume came from Venezuela (348 EUR/t) and the United States (328), both below the 353 average. A desk reading only the 2.0% headline understates what happened to any single supplier relationship; one reading only the 67% monthly move overstates what happened to the average.

An independent check: Methanex posted prices

Customs unit values blend grades, contract types and delivery terms, so a second, unrelated series is worth having. Methanex publishes regional posted contract prices monthly. Europe’s posted price was 535 EUR/t for January, February and March 2026, 850 EUR/t for April, May and June, 915 for July, August and September and 875 for October. The break falls between March and April, the same month as the customs series, and is of the same order of magnitude. Posted prices are contract formulae rather than transactions and are not comparable line-by-line with a CIF customs average; what they establish is direction and timing.

The same series shows a widening Atlantic premium. In July–September 2026 the European posted price was 915 EUR/t while the Asia Pacific posted price was 550 USD/t and China 525 USD/t, both well below their April–June levels of 740 and 610. Europe did not merely follow a global spike; it stayed high after Asia came off. That gap is the most actionable number here for a buyer comparing supply options, and it lines up with the annual data: China’s import unit value fell 7.8% to 273 USD/t in 2025 while European costs were climbing.

The annual backdrop, 2020 to 2025

The monthly window explains the present; the annual panel shows what it deviates from. The table is a fixed panel of the thirteen economies that reported a net weight for methanol exports in all six years, so comparisons are like for like.

Year	Core-panel exports (t)	Value (USD)	Unit value (USD/t)
2020	6,450,558	1,502,719,334	233
2021	6,724,286	2,550,368,546	379
2022	5,992,027	2,298,816,352	384
2023	6,007,868	1,914,566,127	319
2024	6,713,137	2,161,485,067	322
2025	7,315,923	2,371,184,618	324

Source: UN Comtrade annual preview, HS 290511, partner = world. Unit value = primary value ÷ net weight. 2025 is first-reported and subject to revision; 24 of the 30 economies in the panel filed a 2025 figure with a net weight.

Core-panel export tonnage in 2025, at 7,315,923 tonnes, is the highest of the six years and 13.4% above 2020, while the unit value at 324 USD/t is 15.6% below the 2022 peak of 384. The volume is unevenly spread. On the wider 2024-versus-2025 like-for-like set of seventeen exporters, Malaysia added 656,570 tonnes to reach 2,296,927, a 40.0% increase that puts it third behind Saudi Arabia (4,388,739 tonnes) and level with Oman (2,302,378); the Netherlands, Europe’s largest re-export hub, cut 286,994 tonnes; China raised its exports 86%, to 292,490 tonnes.

On the import side the like-for-like set is thinner — eight economies with a net weight in both years — but one buyer dominates: China took 14,430,899 tonnes in 2025, 7.0% more than 2024 and 73% of the panel’s 19,782,765-tonne total, at a unit value of 273 USD/t against 296. A market where the largest importer pays less per tonne while Europe pays more has two price zones, which is what the 2026 monthly data show.

What the policy calendar adds: analysis and outlook

This section is analysis, not statistics from the datasets above; each point is tied to a published source below.

European methanol demand has a second buyer that did not exist at scale five years ago: marine bunkering. FuelEU Maritime has applied in full since 1 January 2025, capping the greenhouse gas intensity of energy used by ships above 5,000 gross tonnage calling at EU ports — a 2% cut in 2025, tightening to 6% by 2030 and 80% by 2050 — and the EU ETS has covered CO2 from large ships entering EU ports since January 2024. Both raise the cost of conventional bunker fuel, and methanol is one of the few alternatives with infrastructure in place: the Methanol Institute counts 452 ports that offer or are preparing to offer methanol bunkering, and reports that Rotterdam alone handles more than 3 million tonnes a year.

That changes how the trade data should be read. Bunker demand is local, contracted ahead and relatively insensitive to a 40% spot swing, because the compliance cost it avoids is itself large: Rotterdam keeps pulling volume even when the barrel is dear, which fits a table in which tonnage barely moved while the price doubled. The risk sits on the supply side. The World Bank’s April 2026 Commodity Markets Outlook calls the closure of the Strait of Hormuz the largest oil market disruption on record, with global supply down 10.1 million barrels a day in March 2026 and Brent up about 65% by the end of that month. Methanol is not crude, but the Gulf producers that lost share ship through the same water. The Bank’s baseline assumes the acute phase ends in May and flows recover by late 2026; if that holds, the marginal Gulf barrel returns and the premium compresses. If it does not, the concentration documented here is the exposure.

Three things to watch

First, the August pause. The import unit value fell from 470 EUR/t to 418 while tonnage held at 507,601 tonnes. One month is not a trend, but it is the first reversal since March; the September print will say whether July was the top.

Second, Oman’s residual price. If Omani barrels return near 594 EUR/t the marginal price stays high; near the 311 EUR/t of 2024–25 the average falls quickly. No other origin has that leverage.

Third, the export book. Exports fell to 275,166 tonnes, with the United Kingdom taking 142,132 (51.7%) and Ukraine 59,308 (21.6%): too small a book to clear surplus barrels abroad when domestic demand softens.

Related PetroApex coverage

Methanol sits upstream of several products covered separately here. Its largest chemical outlet is MTBE, where methanol reacts with isobutene for octane blending, so a sustained methanol move changes the MTBE spread before anything else. Methanol is also the esterification partner in methyl methacrylate and, through acetic acid, in vinyl acetate; both pages carry the unit values a buyer needs to compare feedstock with derivative.

Data sources

• Eurostat Comext DS-045409, EU27 extra-EU monthly trade in HS 290511 — imports query, exports query. Monthly volumes, values, unit values and origins.
• UN Comtrade annual preview, HS 290511, partner = world — 2025 panel query.
• UN Comtrade monthly preview, India (reporter 699), HS 290511 — May 2026 import record. Cross-check only.
• Methanex — current posted contract prices, September 2026 price sheet and monthly average posted price history.
• World Bank — Strait of Hormuz disruption sends oil prices surging (7 May 2026) and the April 2026 Commodity Markets Outlook press release.
• European Commission — FuelEU Maritime and EU ETS for shipping.
• Methanol Institute — Port of Rotterdam joins MI (12 October 2026) and methanol as a marine fuel.

Cross-check and limitation. India’s monthly records carry a net weight in only three of the twelve months to June 2026, so they cannot support a full series; in the months that do, the import unit value moves from 323 USD/t in February 2026 to 663 in May, directionally the same shock as the European data. On the annual side, Comtrade net-weight coverage is incomplete: reporters filing a value without a weight are excluded from tonnage totals rather than treated as zero, and 2025 figures are first-reported.

PetroApex builds comparable customs-based trade panels for methanol and the wider C1 chain from Eurostat Comext and UN Comtrade. For a sample report or a custom extract on methanol, MTBE or the methanol-to-olefins complex, contact our research desk.