Japan's largest steelmaker Nippon Steel Corporation (NSC) and Nippon Steel Trading have received an order from Russian state-run gas monopoly Gazprom for the supply of 20,000 mt of strain-based design (SBD) UO pipes, to be used for a natural gas pipeline project in Russia's Far East, the steelmaker has announced in its statement.
Nippon said that it has been working with Gazprom over the last few years to develop this type of high-grade pipe used in extremely low temperature environments (-40 ℃) , and that this order for 20,000 mt of SBD UO pipes is the largest it has ever received. The pipes will be produced by Nippon Steel's subsidiary Kimitsu Works and will be shipped within this year.
Accordingly, about 20 km of pipes from Nippon Steel will be used by Gazprom for the construction of its 1,850 km-long Sakhalin-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok pipeline, in the areas of crustal deformation or extreme temperatures. The pipeline is to be completed by the end of 2011.