Little, if anything, has changed within the US domestic OCTG market in the past seven days, with sources close to SteelOrbis indicating that market conditions in the current week are slow, due to the year-end holidays.
Most buyers and sellers will be out of the office between Dec. 22 and Jan. 2 to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s.
As with last week, ex-mill pricing for domestic J55 ERW OCTG casing is still trending at $60.00-$62.50 cwt. ($1,322-$1,378/mt or $1,200-$1,250/nt), although it’s been reported that mills have been increasingly willing to offer deals.
In terms of rig counts, the most recent data from Baker Hughes indicates that for the week of Dec. 14, the number of rigs drilling for oil declined by 4, to 873, although year-over-year oil exploration is up by 16.9 percent