Steel Products Prices North America
July 7, 2014
OCTG Imports & New Capacity: Something has to Give
Written by John Packard
Something has to give. US Steel announced during the month of June the closure of two of their OCTG production facilities. The McKeesport facility has a capacity of 315,000 tons of OCTG per year while the Bellville operation capacity is 100,000 tons of OCTG on an annual basis. Total US Steel production capacity of oil country tubular goods is 2.8 million net tons.
While US Steel is shutting down plants, other OCTG producing companies are either in the process of expanding capacity or have already completed capacity expansion projects. When all of the projects listed in the table below are completed, U.S. companies will have added an additional 5.2 million tons of mostly OCTG pipe production. If you add just the US Steel capacity to the new projects, the total, 7 million net tons, is approximately the size of the entire oil country tubular goods market in the United States.
