You're reading: Taganrog Metallurgical Works to supply pipes for Gazprom’s South Stream

Taganrog - OJSC Taganrog Metallurgical Works (Tagmet), part of OJSC Pipe Metallurgical Company (TMK), plans in February to supply Gazprom with a text consignment of pipe for the South Stream project, Tagmet's technical director, Vasily Mulchin, told the press on Wednesday.

The test consignment will amount to 600 tonnes of pipe with diameters from 114 to 168 millimeters.

This consignment will be made from special steel with determined requirements as to corrosion, casting, and heat-treatment, considering the pipe will be laid on the seabed.

“In 2008, we launched a thermal division with productivity of 200,000 tonnes of highly durable pipe. And today the plant can already turn out around 385,000 tonnes of heat-treated pipe, that is, about 50% of the pipe made is already heat-treated, Mulchin said.

TMK, one of Russia’s premier pipe-producers, has production facilities in Russia, the United States, Romania and Kazakhstan. The Russia-based enterprises include Seversky Tube Works, Sinara Pipe Works, Volzhsky Pipe Works (VTZ) and Tagmet. TMK’s main beneficiary is the chairman of its board of directors, Dmitry Pumpyansky. Free-float is 23%.

The company makes almost all types of steel pipe, including high-durability pipe with special features, anti-corrosion pipe with highly hermetic threaded joints, steel seamless heat-deformed boring pipe with welded hold-downs, pumping-compressor casing pipe and couplings for them, pipe for the repair of wells, welded steel sections, and steel pipe for carrying gas underwater. The steel-smelting complex fully supplies enterprises’ needs for steel pipe billets.

The South Stream pipeline, capacity up to 63 bcm of gas per year, is being built to pipe Russian gas to Europe bypassing Ukraine.