Tenaris US President Luca Zanotti gave a keynote presentation to members of the Pipeliners Club of Oklahoma City, sharing industry outlook and challenges specific to the tubular sector.
The Pipeliners Club is comprised of industry professionals working in the upstream, midstream and downstream segments of oil and gas. Zanotti kicked off the organization’s first meeting of 2021, sharing Tenaris’s strategic operational and service footprint in the States, the process technologies powering its manufacturing, its expertise in product development and its leading work to digitalize the tubular sector.
Tenaris has developed a digital box of tools to streamline processes for customers, from supply chain solutions to the effective, digital management of administrative tasks.
“We strongly believe that by working together with our customers, we have the possibility to learn what needs to be developed in terms of technology and steel grades,” said Zanotti, citing the development of pipe connections capable of higher torques for longer lateral drilling as a direct result of the heightened customer integration.
Zanotti noted that despite the uptick in oil and gas activity and a boost in the price of oil, challenges remain for tubulars such as dramatic overcapacity resulting from the drop in activity, low demand for pipe, rising costs of raw materials, and unfairly traded imports of OCTG and line pipe adding to the domestic market’s pipe overhang with South Korea a major contributor.
“There is a significant amount of material coming from countries that are not operating according to market economy rationale,” said Zanotti. “We need to work as an industry on the issue of fair trade to maintain a strong, competitive and healthy pipe business.” He indicated S. Korea has maintained a strong level of imports despite the industry downturn with its share of imports jumping 18 to 40 percent the first to last quarter of 2020.
Zanotti underlined that long-term, fossil fuels will continue to be a dominant source of the energy matrix amid shifts in the energy landscape and with the US to remain a key player for its development.
“The United States is the largest market in the world for tubular products. It has been, it is and will continue to be in the future,” said Zanotti. “We continue to invest; we are investing at our steel shop in Koppel, PA, to efficiently cast our steel in the US.”
Tenaris, which has a commercial office and operates a pipe and transportation service center in Oklahoma, serves as an elite sponsor of the Pipeliners Club. The two partners share a common goal in promoting education in the community, awarding scholarships to area students to pursue and advance their studies.
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