Nippon Steel Corporation's seamless steel pipe sales volume reached to 1.03 billion tons in 2018.

The demand for crude oil in developing countries declined and the development of US shale oil accelerated during early of 2015. The sales volume of seamless steel pipes was only 830,000 tons in 2015.

After a lapse of 4 years, the company's seamless steel pipe output restored to a scale of 1 million tons last year. With the increasing number of energy development projects in the US, the Middle East, Australia and Asia, the demand for OCTG and line pipe is quickly restored.

At present, the production line from Nippon Steel and other Japanese seamless pipe producer were fully booked. It was expected that the line continued to be in full production in 2019.