Russia's largest oil and gas pipe producer TMK has announced that it has begun supplying the biggest Russian oil company Lukoil with hydrogen-sulphide resistant casing and tubing pipe, which was developed and produced to meet the needs of Lukoil's drilling operations in the Russian Far North.
The first shipment of new sour grade service tubulars amounted to 3,000 mt, and included 177.8 mm Tagmet 90 SS casing with 10.36 mm wall thickness, 244.48 mm Volzhsky 90 SS casing with 10.03 mm wall thickness and 73.02 mm Sinarsky C-90 tubing with wall thickness ranging from 5.51 to 7.01 mm.
The new TMK sour grade range, designed for well environments containing hydrogen sulphide (H2S), was developed to further expand the company's high-end product offering, as well as to replace tubular imports of this grade in the Russian market.
To obtain pipes that are resistant to sulphide stress cracking, TMK performs heat treatment operations which modify the mechanical characteristics of the pipes by altering the molecular structure of the steel.