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STEEL PIPE & TUBE CONF: US pipe, tube margins narrow despite pickup
February 09, 2012 - 23:27 GMT
Location:
Houston
KEYWORDS:
Industrial Group
,
Cullen King
,
Pipe Exchange
,
Dolty Cheramie
,
Seba Pipe
,
Don Baysal
,
steel tube and pipe
The United States looks poised for an extended period of strong drilling activity, but whether that will lead to increased prices for energy tubulars remains to be seen.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t challenges ahead, particularly in a steel tube and pipe sector that has become "more crowded" than it was in the past, Cullen said. "There are plenty of buyers. They have money to spend and needs they are trying to fill. The bad news is there are an equal number of sellers, all with inventory and very motivated to move it—sometimes at pricing that is less than they have been willing to move it in the past."
That aggressive selling may be a result of the recent economic crisis, when many distributors had their "noses bloodied" as they found themselves holding too much high-priced inventory in a collapsing market with yet more inventory...
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Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC.
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