Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant of Russian has announced its production results for the Q1 of the current year.

Accordingly, in Q1 ChTPZ's steel pipe sales increased to 488,000 tonnes up 45% compared to 337,000 tonnes in Q1 2010. Its sales volumes of large diameter pipes, OCTG and seamless industrial pipes increased by 94%, 26% and 33% respectively compared to Q1 2010.

The strong performance in sales volumes of steel pipes and also of core products for trunk pipeline systems arose due to an increase in demand from ChPTZ's main oil and gas customers, primarily Gazprom.

In 2010, ChPTZ launched its new large diameter pipe mill, Vysota 239. In March this year, Vysota 239 produced 52,000 tonnes of LD pipes. In Q1, the sales volume from the new LD pipe shop totaled 131,000 tonnes including 114,000 tonnes shipped to Gazprom's Yamal Ukhta Torzhok pipeline project.

(Sourced from Steel Orbis)