Last week, SteelOrbis reported that activity and inquiries within the US domestic and import J55 ERW OCTG casing market were stable, although sources were reporting that the market was showing signs of the typical year-end slowdown. Those conditions have held stable since our last report.
The market is still well-supplied, a source said, adding that service centers have been increasingly willing to cut deals with buyers as a means of moving inventory, which “makes the average service center transaction price hard to pinpoint.”
Ex-mill pricing for domestic J55 ERW OCTG casing, however, remains stable, at $60.00-$62.50 cwt. ($1,322-$1,378/mt or $1,200-$1,250/nt).
In terms of rig counts, despite the news from Baker Hughes that the number of US rigs drilling for oil declined by 10, week-over-week, to 877, there are still 126 more rigs targeting oil today than there were during the same reporting period in 2017. Year over year oil exploration is also still up, by 16.8 percent.