Development and Prospect of China's Steel Pipe Industry in 75 Years since Founding of the People's Republic of China (excerpts)
AUTHOR：ZHONG Xidi, YANG Fan, GAO Ruiquan
Abstract: Since the 14th Five-Year Plan, under the background of multiple risks and challenges emerging at home and abroad.China's steel pipe production and apparent consumption have shown a declining trend. The steel pipe industry is facing the market depression, demand downtown, price decrease, efficiency decline and other difficulties, the industry supply and demand contradiction prominent. The output, import and export volume, apparent consumption of steel pipe industry at home and abroad were analyzed, the global steel pipe production and the transformation and upgrading measures taken after the steel production in developed countries such as the European Union reached the peak, the development status of the new quality productivity of China’s steel pipe industry under the new situation was summarized, the future development of steel pipe industry was proposed.Under the new situation, enterprises should take the initiative to adapt to changes in market demand, increase investment in research and development, adjust structure, improve quality, promote transformation, and accelerate the formation of new quality productive forces, so as to achieve the change of quantity competition in the incremental stage to quality competition in the reduction stage, and promote the high-quality development of China's steel pipe industry.
Key words：steel pipe；production capacity；new quality productive forces；transformation.
Ⅰ The development of China's steel pipe industry since the establishment of new China
1.1 Steel pipe production and apparent consumption
At the beginning of the establishment of new China in 1949, China's welded steel pipe production was only 0.4 million tonnes. After nearly 30 years of development, as of 1978, China's steel pipe production has exceeded one million tonnes, reaching 1.682 million tonnes. By 1986, China's steel pipe production reached 3.754 million tonnes, and the production of steel pipe exceeded that of the United States; in 1990, the production of steel pipe reached 4.319 million tonnes, exceeding that of Germany; In 1999, steel pipe production reached 8.52 million tonnes, surpassing Japan, at which time China became the world's largest country in steel pipe production and manufacturing.
Entering the 21st century, China's steel pipe industry and after 15 years, steel pipe production capacity, production by leaps and bounds. 2015 China's steel pipe production capacity exceeded 110 million tonnes, the output reached 98.02 million tonnes of the peak, accounting for more than 60% of the global steel pipe production. Among them, China's seamless steel pipe production accounted for more than 65 per cent of the world, China's welded steel pipe production accounted for nearly 60 per cent of the world.
Since 2016, China's economy has entered a new stage of transformation and upgrading. In order to solve the structural contradiction of supply and demand, since the implementation of the policy of promoting the structural reform of the supply side, China's steel pipe industry has begun to turn to a new stage of development of reducing, adjusting the structure and high quality, and the steel pipe production and apparent consumption have shown to be the development of tumbling and reducing. Into 2024, the steel pipe industry is still facing the challenges of market downturn, falling demand, supply and demand contradiction, 2024 January-October steel pipe production still shows a negative growth trend.
The main reason for the development of China's steel pipe industry production peaked after the reduction of the main reason is the end of 2015, the central economic work conference put forward the major initiatives of supply-side structural reform, focusing on the realization of the ‘three to one down and one to complement’ (to go to the production capacity, to go to the inventory, to go to the leverage to reduce the cost of making up short boards). 2015 is also the‘Twelfth Five-Year Plan’ ending year, during this period, China's economy is in a “gear shift” from high-speed growth to medium-high growth, the development of the new normal.
1.2 Import and export of steel pipes and tubes
At the beginning of the founding of the country's basic dependence on imports of steel pipe, in 1950 China imported 21,000t of steel pipe, the peak of the 1985 imports of 2,264,000t of steel pipe, with the growing demand for the development of China's national economy, the steel pipe industry has also achieved rapid development of steel pipe imports are constantly decreasing, in 2023, imports of steel pipe 1,985,000t of steel pipe, the peak of the 1985 imports of steel pipe by the decline of the 196.55 million tonnes; to 1982, China began to export steel pipe 0.8 million tonnes, in 2003, China's exports of steel pipe 1.133 million tonnes, imports of steel pipe 1.123 million tonnes, import and export volume is basically flat. 2008 exports of steel pipe reached 9.895 million tonnes, and then with the changes in the international market, the export of steel pipe in general in a downward trend, 2023, China's exports of steel pipe and a new peak, reaching 1.085 million tonnes. The export of steel pipe is also a new peak. A new peak, reached 1007.33 million tonnes, exceeding ten million tonnes. So far, with the rapid decline of China's steel pipe imports and the substantial growth of exports and net exports, China's steel pipe import and export pattern has undergone significant changes, and its influence in the international arena has been expanding.
The continuous optimisation of industrial structure has promoted the export growth of China's high-end steel pipe products, such as oil well pipe, pipeline steel pipe, high-pressure boiler pipe, large-diameter square tube exports in 2023 have shown about 20% growth, at the same time, China's exports of steel pipe types and industrial structure has also been further optimised.
Ⅱ Analysis of the global steel pipe industry and the development of the steel industry in the EU and other developed countries
The global steel pipe industry and the development of the steel industry in the EU and other developed countries. After the production reached a certain peak, they all entered a development stage of reducing the volume and adjusting the structure. Entering the 21st century, the global steel pipe production to a faster rate of growth, according to the data released by the World Steel Association, the steel pipe production in 2010 exceeded 100 million tonnes, reached 172.7 million tonnes in 2018, and then the overall presentation of the overall ups and downs of the reduction of the development trend.
After the Second World War to 1974, the European Union steel production from 1949, 50 million t quickly climbed to 240 million t of the peak, after the steel production into the fluctuation of the depth of the decline in the adjustment period during this period, there is a serious overcapacity, a significant decline in the demand for the situation. Overall steel production fluctuations in the downward trend of the two bottoming out, to 1993 has been less than 190 million t. With the European Union was formally established on 1 November 1993, a new round of global steel growth in the context of the times, the European steel production also appeared in a new round of ‘steady growth’ situation, the output once again back to 240 million t. The production has once again returned to the historical peak of 240 million tonnes, thus creating a new situation of political and economic integration in Europe. In the U.S. subprime crisis, the European debt crisis, the new crown epidemic, Russia-Ukraine conflict, the European energy crisis, large-scale inflation triggered by the last round of interest rate hike cycle and other unprecedented changes in a hundred years in the context of the European Union steel industry has experienced a number of ‘winter’ invasion of steel production fluctuations in the downward trend again. Especially into the 21st century since the 20s, the EU steel enterprises cost advantage is not in, corporate efficiency is generally poor. During this period, the EU and countries to increase the green, low-carbon, intelligent equipment, such as R & D investment, with a view to obtaining greater competitiveness in the low-carbon production of iron and steel.
From the United States, Japan, Germany and other countries, have experienced a new stage of cultivation, development, peak production, reduction, recovery after the peak production and stable development. Developed countries have basically completed industrialisation and urbanisation, steel demand has dropped significantly, which is the main reason for the decline in steel production.
From the perspective of global steel production and the trend of changes in steel production in developed countries such as the European Union after reaching a certain peak, after reaching the peak, it has entered the stage of reducing and adjusting the structure of development, and its transformation and upgrading have mainly taken the following measures.
（1）Product structure optimisation. Iron and steel enterprises in developed countries have gradually shifted their focus to exploring new technologies, shifting the centre of gravity of the industry, and actively upgrading the quality and value-added of steel to meet the new needs of the advanced manufacturing industry, and have begun to reduce the output of low- and medium-end products that are large in volume and low in local competitiveness.
（2）Optimisation of industrial layout. Through the industrial layout gradually from the resource and energy-based layout to the near consumption, low labour costs, environmental requirements of the weak transfer of the region, Japan, Germany and other measures to enhance industrial concentration and competitiveness through mergers and acquisitions, elimination of backward production capacity to promote the optimization of the iron and steel industry layout, reduce homogenization of production capacity.
（3）Expanding steel-using fields. Through the extension to downstream steel-using industries such as construction, automobile, home appliance and equipment manufacturing, and the joint development of near-final shape, lightweight and green products, we will stabilise and expand the demand for steel.
（4）Continuous optimisation of production capacity. Promote merger and reorganisation and asset optimisation in a scientific and orderly manner, eliminate backwardness, remove differences and improve industrial concentration and competitiveness.
（5）Promote technological progress, create high-end products, stabilise exports, and promote stable development of enterprises.
Ⅲ Innovation and development of China's steel pipe industry in recent years
3.1 Seamless steel pipe
In the manufacture of ultra-high strength oil casing, with the continuous development of China's deep well and ultra-deep well drilling technology, the pipe manufacturing technology continues to make progress, the domestic development of the world's first set of seamless steel pipe with full intellectual property rights to online control cooling equipment and key core technologies, the production of strength level of 1060MPa (155V) seamless steel pipe to meet the ultra-high-temperature and high-pressure as well as complex geological conditions. Meanwhile, it also promotes the leading demonstration of green and efficient manufacturing technology of hot rolled seamless steel pipe in China and the continuous iterative upgrading of products.
In the manufacture of large diameter seamless pipes, the company has pioneered the production process of ‘medium-frequency heating and expanding + cold drawing’, which can produce pipes with a maximum diameter of 1,320 mm, a diameter-to-thickness ratio of 100, and a maximum length of 12 m. The products are widely used in the fields of petrochemicals, boilers and electric power, long-distance transmission pipeline networks, pressure vessels, etc. The differentiated development has also brought good economic benefits to the company. Differentiated development has also brought good economic benefits for the enterprise.
In terms of energy saving and environmental protection, the company has developed the ‘continuous casting round pipe bad hot feed hot loading furnace technology’, which plays a key role in saving energy, improving the rate of material and shortening the production cycle, and realises the green, low-carbon, high-efficiency and low-cost production of hot-rolled seamless steel pipes.
In terms of intelligent development, the Ф127 mm small-diameter seamless steel pipe production line, which is the first line in China with centralised control and intelligent production, has been successfully put into production. The whole line adopts the full three-dimensional digital design with the ‘light building’ intelligent construction platform as the carrier, to create an intelligent digital, green and environmentally friendly benchmark demonstration production line.
3.2 Welded steel pipes
Oil and gas pipe, high-strength, large-diameter welded pipe research and development and application of technology to reach the international leading level, the development of X80M Ф1422 mm × 32.1 mm, long 18 m long straight-seam submerged arc welded pipe in the Sino-Russian East Natural Gas Pipeline, the Yangtze River Shield Project was successfully applied to ensure the smooth passage of the Sino-Russian East pipeline. Developed the world's highest strength CT150 Ф50.8 mm × 4.0 mm continuous pipe, the tensile strength of the pipe reached 1141MPa, tensile load reached 60.8t, the depth of the lower man up to 10,000 metres, the pipe within the bursting pressure of 196.2 MPa, the external extrusion pressure of 161.4 MPa, the elongation of 20%, fatigue life of 93.1% more than the CT110 continuous pipe, the better strong plasticity and plasticity of the pipe, the longer 18 m long straight seam submerged arc welded pipe was successfully applied in the shield project of the Yangtze River in the Russian East Natural Gas Pipeline. It has achieved better strong plasticity matching, and has been successfully applied in wells in Xinjiang oilfield. The future oil and gas pipe will be to the deep sea and other complex oil and gas exploration and development environment, as well as long distance and large capacity, high performance, multi-purpose and other directions, so that it not only has the function of transporting oil and gas, but also will be integrated with a variety of uses, such as data transmission, heat insulation, corrosion detection, etc. to achieve multi-purpose pipe to improve the comprehensive benefits of oil and gas pipelines.
In the face of global energy transformation and green low-carbon development trend of major pipe enterprises focus on ‘hydrogen energy’ and ‘CCUS industry chain construction’, and actively promote the deep integration of industry chain and innovation chain. In the field of high-pressure pure hydrogen transport, they have developed L360MH grade HFW welded pipes and X60M grade LSAW pipes with good hydrogen embrittlement resistance, which can meet the needs of high-pressure pure hydrogen transport pipeline projects. In the field of hydrogen-doped transport, we have developed welded pipes for hydrogen-doped transport with a design pressure of 6.3MPa and a maximum hydrogen-doped ratio of 20%, providing strong equipment support for the development of China's hydrogen energy industry chain. In the field of carbon dioxide pipeline transmission, we have developed X65M steel-grade LSAW pipes and X65 steel-grade HFW pipes for supercritical carbon dioxide transmission, with low-temperature fracture toughness to meet the safe service requirements of supercritical carbon dioxide pipelines, which actively promotes the green and low-carbon development of China's welded pipe industry.
In terms of energy storage pipe, in the Ulanqab compressed air energy storage demonstration project, the development of P460 Ф1422 mm × 35 mm, length of 18 m UOE welded pipe, for the first time to achieve the application of welded pipe in the field of containers. At the same time, developed 300MW compressed air energy storage with X70M steel grade Ф1016 mm × 33 mm, length 18 m UOE welded pipe.
In terms of marine engineering, welded steel pipe is used in large-scale steel structure projects at sea, including offshore platforms, offshore wind power and offshore bridges, etc.; in terms of submarine pipeline transmission projects, such as the Chunxiao oil and gas field underwater 300 m submarine oil and gas pipeline and Liwan 3-1 underwater 1500m submarine oil and gas pipeline. At present, the domestic successful trial production of 3500m ultra-deep submarine pipeline with welded steel pipe, the product is able to withstand close to 9 ℃, 350 times the standard atmospheric pressure, for China's deep-sea oil and gas development to provide equipment support.
China's steel pipe industry has become one of the world's most competitive industries, with the world's advanced technology, equipment and technology, built the world's most complete industrial chain, the largest steel pipe industry system. The steel pipe variety structure is complete, upgrading and upgrading is effective, fully meet the market demand. Therefore, it has the strength to go international, integrate into the world, make good use of the two markets at home and abroad, allocate two kinds of resources at home and abroad, further develop the new quality of productivity, and promote the high-quality development of the industry.
Source：《WELDED PIPE AND TUBE》 Vol.48 No.1 Jan.2025
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