Briefly described the development of global seamless steel pipe industry

I. Higher industry capacity concentration

After years of development, the global seamless steel pipe industry has experienced many rounds of industry mergers and acquisitions and reorganization, and has presented the characteristics of oligopoly, and the overall industry capacity concentration is high. According to data from China United Steel, the combined output of the three largest international seamless pipe companies, Vallourec & Mannesmann tubes, Tenaris and TMK, accounted for about 70% of the global seamless pipe production (except in China), and competition in the industry is relatively fierce.

 II. Broader use

Globally, seamless steel pipes are widely used in various fields such as petroleum, natural gas, chemical industry, boiler, power station, ship, machinery, automobile, aviation, aerospace, geology, construction and so on. The main products include oil well pipe, high pressure boiler pipe, chemical pipe, gas cylinder pipe, bearing pipe, mechanical pipe, marine pipe and automobile pipe, etc..

In recent years, seamless steel pipe in oil drilling and transportation, various types of power station boilers and other links play a vital and irreplaceable role, very popular with the industry, the oil and gas industry pipe production and sales have increased significantly.

In the future, as the world energy situation continues to develop, geological and marine development, automotive industry, aerospace and other areas of demand. This will lead to continuous breakthroughs in seamless steel pipe technology and significant improvements in product performance, which will further expand the use of seamless steel pipe.

III. Seamless steel pipe with welded steel pipe competition is increasingly intense

In recent years, with the iron and steel smelting technology, hot rolled steel strip technology, steel pipe manufacturing technology, welding technology and other significant improvements, the quality of weld seam has been qualitatively improved. The quality of products has approached or reached the level of seamless tubes, and the possibility of replacing seamless tubes has been established in certain fields, such as tubes for low and medium pressure boilers, J55 grade petroleum casing, and oil and gas line pipes up to X70 grade.

In the past, the industry generally believe that the welded steel pipe in the quality, safety performance is not as good as seamless steel pipe, coupled with its material is generally ordinary steel Q235, the production process is relatively simple, resulting in its cost is much lower than the seamless steel pipe. But with the two parameters, performance and other gaps have been presented gradually narrowed the trend, the application of the competitive field is becoming more and more extensive.