A ceremony at Skolkovo on Tuesday saw one of the world’s leading steel pipeline producers lay the first stone in the construction of a new research center at the innovations hub.
Skolkovo president Victor Vekselberg, left, and TMK chairman Dmitry Pumpyansky. Photo: sk.ru
TMK is one of the world’s leading producers of tubular products for the oil and gas industry. Since 2009 it has been ranked first in the world by volume of pipes shipped. In 2014, TMK’s pipe shipments totaled 4.4 million tons.
A partnership agreement with Skolkovo was signed in 2013, and work has gone into planning and approving the research center ever since.
“We’re sticking fast to our plan of cooperation with this company,” said Skolkovo president Victor Vekselberg. “First the cooperation deal was signed, then followed a long preparatory stage, and today we are laying the first stone in the foundations of the future building,” he said.
TMK chairman Dmitry Pumpyansky noted that “over these last two years, a huge amount of work has been done. Thanks to our status as Skolkovo partner, we have received free land upon which to build our R&D center. That is to say, the status as a strategic partner really works.”
TMK has also created a subsidiary that will enter the Skolkovo ecosystem as a resident, Pumpyansky said.
“Our colleagues from Skolkovo have presented very favorable conditions, there is a unique arrangement here. I recommend everyone to participate in the Skolkovo project,” he added.
TMK will use its research center at Skolkovo, slated to come online in the first quarter of 2017, to develop and test new forms of threaded joint. Such research is currently done overseas at great expense and with long delays.
Connecting pipes with tapered threads is common practice in the industry: Threads are cut into the end of the tubing segment, some sealant is applied, and it is then threaded into a corresponding fitting using two pipe wrenches.
Communist Party chairman Gennady Zyuganov, center. Photo: sk.ru
The research center is to take up 15,000 square meters and be home to 200 researchers. One floor of the center will be used as TMK’s corporate university. It will take over as the main research hub from the company’s two locations, in the Urals city of Chelyabinsk and in Houston, Texas.
The stone-laying ceremony was also attended by Gennady Zyuganov, chairman of Russia’s Communist Party.
“We welcome the speedy construction that Skolkovo is overseeing,” said Zyuganov, a four-time candidate in the Russian presidential elections. “A big and powerful country can’t live and develop with science and technology. We are very interested in developing projects that will enjoy serious success, and Skolkovo is one such project.”
TMK company operates 30 production sites in Russia, the U.S., Canada, Romania, Oman, the UAE and Kazakhstan and has the world’s largest steel pipe production capacity, with the largest share of sales dedicated to oil country tubular goods (OCTG).
According to its website, TMK produces a range of steel pipes used in the oil and gas sector, the chemical and petrochemical industries, energy and machine-building, construction and housing utilities, shipbuilding, aviation and aerospace, agriculture.
The commissioning of a modern complex to produce longitudinally welded large diameter pipes has enabled the company to secure a role in large national projects to build oil and gas pipelines in Russia and the CIS.
TMK delivers its products along with an extensive package of services in heat treating, protective coating, premium connections threading, warehousing and pipe repairing. TMK’s products meet state-to-state, Russian, foreign and international standards. At all of the Company’s plants the quality system is certified according to ISO 9001 and API Spec Q1 standards.
Consolidation of production assets, implementation of innovative scientific and engineering developments and a geographically diversified sales network have allowed the company to create a modern global technological complex manufacturing high-tech and competitive pipe products.