Vallourec told SteelOrbis that demand for steel tubular products in Brazil is not expected to be affected by new proposed rules for the local oil and gas sector. The proposed regulation could decrease the minimum requirement for oil companies winning gas auctions to hire services and products in Brazil from 55 to 25 percent.
“I don’t see that as a negative thing [for us,] since other oil companies may also count on the services we provide Petrobras today. Actually, we’ll have more clients. And if the client likes our offering, it will want to use it in other parts of the world, like the Gulf of Mexico,” Alexandre Lyra, the company’s senior vice president for South America, told SteelOrbis in an exclusive interview in the sidelines of the Brazil Steel Congress, held last week in Brasilia.
Currently, state-run oil producer Petrobras is a Vallourec’s top-five consumer of tubes worldwide, Lyra said.
Lyra declined to provide sales figures for the Brazilian operations of Vallourec, but said the company has been supporting oil and gas companies, including Petrobras, as a way to add value to the services the company offers.
“In the past years, we’ve been into the services area that relates to tubes. We do support clients while installing tubes at oil and gas platforms, we repair tubes that return from the platforms, we provide logistics services and manufacture accessories as well,” Lyra said.
“This portfolio makes us stand against the imported tubes,” the executive added.
Lyra also welcomed recent antidumping (AD) duties over imported tubes from China and Romania.
“We have to thank the government for making this [AD] process agile and extending duties for a further five years,” he said.
Lyra said the existing duties extended on the Chinese carbon steel pipes were the most important case against foreign tubes.
“Other AD duties will be renewed 2 and 3 years for now,” he said.