The Russian pipe producer TMK Group (TMK) has announced that due to weak market demand it has reduced its total shipments of pipes in the first half of the current year by 20 percent year on year to 1.203 million mt, including 765,000 mt of seamless pipes - down 22 percent, and 437,000 mt of welded pipes - down 14 percent year on year. The company estimates that in H1 2009 the Russian pipe market declined by 34.8 percent year on year.
On the other hand, despite the weak pipe market, in H1 2009 TMK increased its deliveries of high-margin OCTG products by three percent and its shipments of premium connections by 47 percent, the latter rising to 61,000 mt. In the first half of the year, TMK's seamless OCTG market share in Russian was estimated at 71 percent.
Meanwhile, in Q2 2009, due to its new longitudinal welded large diameter (LD) pipe capacity, TMK was able to increase its pipe shipments by seven percent, supplying longitudinal welded LD pipes for Gazprom's Bovanenkovo-Ukhta pipeline, Transneft's Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean oil pipeline and for projects in Central Asia.
In H2 2009, with the implementation of the Sakhalin-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok and Baltic Pipeline System-2 pipeline projects, TMK expects a further increase in LD pipe demand, which is also expected to grow in the CIS as state-owned oil and gas companies in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan invest in the development of oil and gas fields and related infrastructure.