Chelyabinsk Tube-Rolling Plant (ChTPZ), a leading Russian producer of welded and seamless steel pipes and tubes and a supplier of integrated solutions to the Russian oil and gas industry as well as to a variety of other industries in Russia, has announced its production results for the first quarter of the current year. Accordingly, in Q1 ChTPZ's steel pipe sales increased to 488,000 mt, up 45 percent compared to 337,000 mt in Q1 2010. Its sales volumes of large diameter (LD) pipes, OCTG and seamless industrial pipes increased by 94 percent, 26 percent, and 33 percent, respectively, compared to Q1 2010.
The strong performance in sales volumes of steel pipes and also of core products for trunk pipeline systems arose due to an increase in demand from ChPTZ's main oil and gas customers, primarily Gazprom.
In 2010, ChPTZ launched its new large diameter pipe mill, Vysota 239. In March this year, Vysota 239 produced 52,000 mt of LD pipes. In Q1, the sales volume from the new LD pipe shop totaled 131,000 mt, including 114,000 mt shipped to Gazprom's Yamal-Ukhta-Torzhok pipeline project.