On December 30, 2009, Ukraine and Russia agreed to introduce changes to the agreement on the regulation of the supply of certain types of steel pipes from Ukraine to Russia, signed between the countries on January 13, 2005, the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of Russia has announced.
The new protocol signed between the countries extends until December 31, 2010 the validity of the agreement, which incorporates voluntary commitments of five Ukrainian companies to supply a wide range of pipe products to Russia up to a certain quota, with zero percent antidumping (AD) duty. By the government decision dated December 20, 2005, Russia imposed for a five-year period an 11.4 percent AD duty on Ukrainian imports of casing and an 8.9 percent AD duty on imports of oil and gas and general purpose hot-deformed pipes from Ukraine.
Accordingly, for the first quarter of 2010, Ukraine's quota for pipe exports to Russia stands at 55,000 metric tons. The quota for the full year 2010 will be defined in February 2010. For 2009, Ukraine's quota for pipe exports to Russia stood at 427,000 metric tons.
As SteelOrbis previously reported, on December 30, 2009, Russia re-opened the antidumping investigation on imports of casing, oil and gas and general purpose hot-deformed pipes with diameter up to 820 mm originating from Ukraine, in order to determine the need to review the existing AD measures.