Liberty pipe mills at Hartlepool, England has won a multi-million pound contract to supply steel pipeline for North Sea gas.
The mills, which were acquired and relaunched by Liberty, part of Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance, in late 2017, have just begun making the first batch of a total order for 12,000 tonnes of 24 inch steel pipe from global engineers Subsea7, that will be used in the Shell Shearwater gas field over 200 miles off the coast of Scotland.
Over the next few months workers at Hartlepool will make around 22 miles of heavy-duty pipe that will lie 90 metres under the sea, helping channel millions of cubic metres of gas each day to the huge St Fergus onshore terminal in Aberdeenshire.
This order, along with the Subsea7 contract to provide large diameter steel pipe for Equinor’s Snorre Expansion Project off the coast of Norway, is among the largest contracts secured by the Hartlepool mill since its acquisition by Liberty. It will ensure that both the 42 inch and 84 inch mills at Hartlepool have full order books as the operation moves into the Spring.
Order books for both mills were also bolstered in recent months by major contracts totalling over 20,000 tonnes of pipe from the USA, one for the energy sector and another for the construction of chemical giant Lyondell Basell’s new showpiece plant in Texas.
The comeback of the mills, which suffered badly during the downturn in the steel industry over recent years, has seen job numbers grow from 120 up to 200 over the past few months.
