JFE Steel to supply pipes for Petrobras pre-salt fields

Japan’s JFE Steel Corporation announced today that together with Metal One Corporation it has received an order for 280 metric tons of JFE-UHP-17CR-110 OCTG pipe for casing from Brazil’s national oil company, Petrobras.

The pipes will be used on Petrobras’s offshore oil development project in Brazil. Casing pipe is inserted into the underground hole (including sea bottom) during the drilling of oil/gas wells to serve as a solid outer shell that protects OCTG from external pressures.

OCTG is an abbreviation for Oil Country Tubular Goods, meaning pipe and tube products used in petroleum industry, such as drill pipe, pipe casings, oil pipes.

This is the first order received for JFE-UHP-17CR-110, a newly developed grade that boasts higher corrosion resistance, JFE said.

This OCTG – with a thickness of 13.84 mm and an outer diameter of 9.625 inches (244.4 mm) – have been produced and shipped at JFE’s Chita Works.

This project aims to extract oil from the “pre-salt” layer, which lies 3,000–4,000 meters under the bottom of the ocean waters by Brazil. Since the pre-salt environment is under high corrosion scenario, high-end and expensive duplex stainless OCTG was mostly used in the past.

The company further says that JFE-UHP-17CR-110 pipe, which JFE Steel developed, has greater superiority in corrosion resistance than JFE-UHP-15CR, which is also strong and corrosion- and temperature-resistant. In addition, this pipe costs less and has a shorter lead-time than duplex stainless OCTG.

This is the very first commercial order for JFE-UHP-17CR-110.