On December 2, President Xi Jinping made a video call in Beijing to Russian President Putin, to jointly witness the launching ceremony of the China-Russia east-route natural gas pipeline. In the construction of this long natural gas transmission pipeline which is the energy aorta stretching across China and Russia with the largest single piece scale in the world, Baosteel Ltd. demonstrated the strength of leading enterprising in domestic steel industry, and is the only full portfolio supplier of heavy plate, hot-rolled sheet and longitudinal submerged arc welded pipe, among which, the plate for longitudinal submerged arc welded pipe with the highest technical content accounts for 50%, and the plate for yard tube and pigging and elbow pipe are all exclusively provided by Baosteel Ltd.

China-Russia east-route natural gas pipeline project is the third transnational natural gas long distance transmission pipeline supplying natural gas to China following Central Asia, China-Myanmar Gas Pipeline Projects, and is the first cross-border long distance gas transmission pipeline adopting large caliber, high steel grade and high pressure grade with the largest transmission amount of single pipe at the same time. Upon the 70th anniversary of the China-Russia diplomatic relations, China-Russia east-route natural gas pipeline project starts to supply gas, elevating the strategic cooperation between China and Russia in energy field to a brand-new level.

Baosteel Ltd. defined China-Russia east-route natural gas pipeline as a key project and establish the project for tracking during the planning and preparatory period of the project, and set up the project team consisting of Steel Tube, Pipe and Bar Business Unit, Hot-rolled Sheet and Engineering Material Sales Department, Northern Trading Company, Baosteel Trading, etc., successively completed the appraisal of new products such as 1422*21.4/25.7/30.8 X80M thick plate, hot-rolled, longitudinal submerged arc welded pipe, laying a solid foundation for full portfolio supply of steel products for the project. After the engineering project started officially, Baosteel Ltd. actively participated in the project construction, through the signing of strategic purchase agreement with CNPC and elaborate planning of project bidding, accumulatively received the orders of 202,000t of thick plate, 161,000t of hot-rolled sheet and 101,000t of steel tubes.

1422 X80M pipeline steel used in China-Russia east-route natural gas pipeline project is not only the highest steel grade of pipeline steel applied in batches in the world, but also challenges the OD production limitation of UOE welded pipe. In order to guarantee the timely completion of national key projects with guaranteed quality and quantity, Baosteel Ltd. coordinated each production base and each line to guarantee the supply of the project in an all-round and multi- dimension way, Baoshan Base, Qingshan Base, Meishan Base and Dongshan Base gave play to respective advantages to guarantee the supply for the project. In the beginning of this year, Wuhan Iron & Steel Co., Ltd. entered the namelist of CNPC strategic supply guarantee for the first time. In the first half of this year, Wuhan Iron & Steel Co., Ltd. supplied 75,000t to CNPC.

For the construction of supply guarantee project, the production, sales and research team of Baosteel Ltd. followed the field demand of users closely, the Northern Company coordinated with Hot-Rolled Sheet and Engineering Material Sales Department to formulate the differential supply solution of each line, so as to guarantee the timely and correct delivery of thick plate and hot-rolled products. Baosteel Trading Company coordinated with Steel Tube, Pipe and Bar Business Unit to give play to the advantages of through-going system production, on the premise of guaranteeing quality, created the record of completing emergent supply of 20,000t UOE pipes within 25 days. Within the supply period, Baosteel Ltd. dispatched technical service personnel to stay in the construction site for rapid response and excellent and efficient service. The timely and accurate supply, high quality products, excellent and efficient service powerfully guarantee the smooth progress of the project construction, and got the owner’s high praise.

The north section project that is put into operation this time will introduce 5 billion m3 natural gas in the first year, after the completion of middle and southern sections, every year, 38 billion m3 natural gas will be transported through pipeline to Shanghai directly, and benefit more people along the line. Now Baosteel Ltd. is also actively participating in the full portfolio supply of middle section project, and passed new product appraisal of 1422*32.1 X80M thick plate and steel tube to be used in Southern section project.