Prices still unaffected by trade cases hanging over US import OCTG

Last week, the US International Trade Commission (ITC) last week made affirmative preliminary injury determinations in the antidumping (AD) investigations of oil country tubular goods (OCTG)  from India, Korea, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, and Vietnam and countervailing duty (CVD) investigations of OCTG from India and Turkey. As a result, the US Department of Commerce will be conducting full-scale investigations. Trader sources have said that new futures offers from the countries named in the case have completely fallen off. However, as predicted, offers for unfinished import J55 electric resistance welded (ERW) OCTG from Western European countries have surfaced, but the prices are much higher than US domestic levels, and therefore attracting no interest. Inquires with regard to on-the-ground import OCTG casing have increased, likely due to an anticipation that prices will go up, but trader inventories of position tons are not moving any faster.

Meanwhile, US domestic prices for finished J55 ERW OCTG casing have held steady this week at approximately $58.00-$61.00 cwt. ($1,279-$1,323/mt or $1,160-$1,200/nt) ex-Midwest mill. But as with last week, price depends on the mill and the size of the order.  Although it is still believed that the trade case will eventually cause US domestic prices to firm, industry insiders have said that for now at least, demand domestically for OCTG is not strong enough to support higher prices