Napa Pipe Corp., Napa, Calif., has recently shipped to Tunisia the second of two loads of 24 in. x 0.500-in. W.T., API 5L X-60, high-pressure line pipe. The vessels were loaded at Stockton, Calif.
The pipe is for use on British Gas' 80-mile pipeline to carry natural gas from the Miskar gas field to the Hannibal gas plant. The shipment consisted of 27,000 tons of 10,550 joints of 40 ft pipe.
Napa's mill is also in the early stages of supplying to Thailand 80% of the 28 and 36-in. pipe for 413 km of offshore (256 mile) and 205 km of onshore pipeline from the Erawan field in the Gulf of Thailand to power stations at Bang Pakong and Wang Noi.
INTERNATIONAL INCURSION
Seven cargoes of 18,000 short tons each are planned for the Thailand job, of which four were shipped between March and June. A fifth was scheduled for late June.
The foreign contracts, especially the Thailand job, represent a significant breakout of the North American market for Napa, says the company, and an incursion into markets heretofore dominated by Japanese and European mills.
Napa has been quietly competing in the North American market since it opened under that name in 1988 as a subsidiary of Oregon Steel Mills Inc., Portland.
Oregon steel bought the mill from bankrupt Kaiser Steel Corp. in 1987.
Napa Pipe is the only manufacturer of straight seam, double-submerged, arc-welded (DSAW) pipe in the western U.S. and one of only three such mills in the U.S. It makes pipe ranging from 16 in. through 42 in. and in wall thicknesses that vary 0.250 in. to 1 in.
Plate for rolling into pipe is supplied from Oregon Steel's Portland or Fontana mills.
Pipe from Napa's mill can be externally coated on site with fusion-bonded epoxy (FBE) in a separate plant managed by Commercial Resins Co.
FBE coating for British Gas' project was 28 mils; pipe for the Thailand project has been shipped bare.
The plant at the Napa site began as a water-pipe mill before World War 11 and served during the war for seagoing ship repair and fabrication.
Copyright 1994 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.
