TPi March 2018

Tata Steel creates range of lower temperature/higher strength steels for oil industry An interview with Barry Rust, energy and sustainability manager, Tata Steel

While Oil & Gas UK has estimated up to 20 billion barrels of oil and gas have still to be recovered from the UK’s waters, many of the ‘easy’ plays have already been exploited, leaving only the more technically challenging areas available for development. Alongside the need to explore these deeper and more difficult fields with higher operating pressures, the recent prolonged downturn in oil and gas prices, with a greater focus on project cost reduction and, in some cases, a loss of more senior personnel, has enhanced the risk profile of opportunities. This has fostered an increasing degree of conservatism both in specification requirements and overall business approach from some companies. The combination of these trends has led to an increased industry requirement for pipelines of higher strength that can perform effectively at lower temperatures. Added to this, operators are looking to work with quality suppliers that can not only provide products to specifications first time but also have a proven record in project management and skills as a complete package offering. Having supplied more than one million tonnes of pipeline for oil and gas projects in the North Sea over 23 years, including in excess of four million metres of welded pipe, 500,000 metres of reel installed pipe and more than £250mn invested in subcontracts for North Sea projects, Tata Steel has the experience, capabilities and innovative ambition required to continue to serve this important market in the latest chapter of its history. “We constantly listen to the industry and our customers, and, as a result, have worked with them to create a new range of steels for pipelines solutions that we believe not only answer their operational challenges today but will help to satisfy their requirements for the future,” said Barry Rust, energy and sustainability manager, Tata Steel. R ecent and forecast developments in oil and gas, specifically in the difficult environment of the North Sea, have led Tata Steel to innovate a new range of steels to provide effective pipeline solutions to the challenges faced by the industry.

Barry Rust

“The development of these new pipeline steels indicates the extent of our ambition as a company to continue to offer impressive innovation to the industry, and our ability to deliver on that ambition, as we look to support our customers in reducing their total cost of ownership.” The company has introduced three new high strength pipeline steels for both on and offshore applications, which deliver performance at lower temperatures. Tata Steel has also worked to optimise its existing pipeline steels to improve performance. The results have led to significant uplifts in toughness performance at some 20 to 30°C lower test temperatures.

Monitoring production at Tata’s Hartlepool plant

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March 2018 TUBE PRODUCTS INTERNATIONAL