Steel Products

Tenaris Plans on Building New Seamless Pipe Mill in Texas

February 18, 2013

Written by: Sandy Williams

The booming business in natural gas drilling is causing a flurry of new production facilities for the manufacture of seamless OCTG (oil country tubular goods) pipe in the United States.

Most recently, Tenaris SA, a Luxembourg-based producer of steel pipes for the oil and natural gas industry, announced plans to build its first U.S. seamless pipe mill in Bay City, Texas. The $1.5 billion facility will have an annual production capacity of 600,000 tons of high quality seamless pipe. The facility will generate 600 manufacturing jobs and begin operations in 2016, the company said.

In November 2012, Vallourec began production in Youngstown, Ohio of small diameter tubes to supply the shale oil and gas market in North America. The mill produces seamless pipe from 2 3/8 inches to 7 inches in diameter. Initial annual production capacity for Vallourec is 350,000 tons, with future capacity of 550,000 tons.

Tianjin Pipe Corp is building a seamless pipe mill in Gregory, Texas with an expected completion date in 2014. When operational, the TPCO America facility will produce approximately 500,000 metric tons of 4 inch through 10 ¾ inch seamless steel pipe annually.

Seamless steel tubes are used in “fracking” for natural gas in shale basins. The process is often referred to as “unconventional drilling” due to the horizontal drilling process in which batches of smaller pipe extend from a single point into the basins.

If you are interested in seeing how seamless tube is manufactured we have included a link to a YouTube video. Start the video at the 60 second point if you wish to remove the intro and advertising.