Texas-based sources close to SteelOrbis say they’ve begun to see an uptick in activity now that the floodwaters from Hurricane Harvey have receded.
“There was a lot that we couldn’t do for a couple of weeks but now everyone seems to be playing catch-up,” a source said. A second service center source agreed, adding that while market sentiment remains the same, he has also seen an uptick in activity in the past two weeks.
“The market seems to be staying its course. Things are busy for now, but that’s just because everything was at a standstill in late-August and early September,” he said. “Once the backlog gets worked through we don’t expect any big shakeups and think that things will be stable through the rest of the third quarter.”
Pricing, sources say, continues to remain stable. At current, pricing for imported J55 ERW OCTG casing from Taiwan in the US domestic market has held lateral at $41.00-$42.50 cwt. ($904-$937/mt or $820-$850/nt), DDP loaded truck in US Gulf coast ports.
The most recent data from the US Department of Commerce indicates that for the month of August, license data for US import OCTG from Taiwan was recorded at 12,215 mt. Current license data US import OCTG from Taiwan for the month of September has been recorded at 30,096 mt.