Russia's TMK, one of the world’s leading producers of tubular products for the oil and gas industry, has made a shipment of seamless line pipes for an offshore mining project. The product will be utilized in the Solwara 1 project of Nautilus Minerals Inc. aimed at extracting seafloor massive sulphide (SMS) deposits in the Bismark Sea off of Papua New Guinea.

The pipes were produced at Volzhsky Pipe Plant, which is a part of TMK. The plant is the first qualified Russian mill licensed to produce high-grade API 5L X80QO seamless line pipe in accordance with API Spec. 5L/ISO 3183 for manufacturing of deep-water risers. The pipes were shipped to General Marine Contractors, LLC of Houston, Texas, for welding and assembly into the completed riser system.

Massive sulphide deposits are volcanogenic in origin and are known to host high-grade concentrations of copper, gold, silver, zinc and other metals suitable for industrial processing.

Nautilus Minerals, Inc. is a pioneer of SMS deposit exploration and production. Developed by Nautilus Minerals, the Solwara 1 project requires extraction of raw materials from the seafloor at 1,600 meters water depth. The project is the first of its kind in the world.

SMS development technology includes cutting of the seafloor massive sulphide deposits with three large remotely operated cutting machines and pumping the resultant mineral slurries to a production support vessel for dewatering and subsequent export to concentrating mills.

Alexander Shiryaev, TMK’s CEO, noted that, "TMK is now the first in Russia to be qualified to produce grade API 5L X80 seamless line pipes thereby extending its product range to create more opportunities for the company to successfully compete in equipment supply for ever more complex and challenging offshore and subsea projects. The shipment of our product for the Solwara 1 project in the Bismark Sea strengthens TMK’s reputation as a global supplier of high quality steel pipes and widens its product market".