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New Pipe Coating Plant to Open in TX

Friday, June 24, 2011

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A Houston-based steel pipe distributor will expand its operations this fall by adding a major pipe coating facility to serve South Texas’ fast-growing Eagle Ford Shale region.

Tex-Isle Supply Inc. is building a 40,000-square-foot plant at its 40-acre pipe storage facility just outside the town of George West, in South Texas.

The company, founded in 1959, is a producer of oil country tubular goods and line pipe.

Tex-Isle Supply Inc.

The new pipe coating facility will serve the booming Eagle Ford Shale region in South Texas.

The new coating facility, located within an hour’s drive of the Port of Corpus Christi, is being “designed and engineered by a team with over 30 years’ experience building, operating and maintaining pipe coating plants worldwide,” the company says.

Plant Capabilities

The plant will be able to process all types of line pipe: from two inches to 24 inches in diameter and from 25 to 65 feet long.

Coatings products will include standard FBE as well as FBE with Abrasion Resistance Overcoating (FBE/ARO), FBE with High Temperature Resistant Overcoating, FBE with Zap-Wrap Overcoating (FBE/ZW), and Acid Pre-Treatment.

The FBE products will comply with NACE RP0394, NACPA Bulletin 12-78, AWWA C213, CSA Z245.20, and ISO 21809-2.

The facility will feature the latest equipment from CRC-Evans, Ajax TOCCO Magnethermic, ITW Gema, Pangborn Corp. and others, Tex-Isle says.

The facility will also offer:

• Double jointing;

• Zap-Lok pipeline connection;

• Heat-shrinkable sleeves;

• Pipe beveling and re-beveling, and

• Field joint materials.

The location will allow for efficient transportation of pipe and enough storage acreage for a variety of logistics services, including pipeline stringing operations and pipe stocking, the company says.

Shale Pipeline Boom

The plant will allow Tex-Isle to serve operators in the Eagle Ford Shale, a booming shale play in the Western Gulf Region of South Texas. The Eagle Ford Shale has already attracted two dozen oil and gas producers, including BP, ConocoPhillips, Exxon and Shell.

Tex-Isle Supply is not saying what the new facility will cost, calling it only a multimillion-dollar investment.

“We'll sell to oil and gas companies,” Luke Price, vice president of outside sales and marketing, told the San Antonio Express-News. “A lot of pipelines are going in down there in the Eagle Ford Shale.”

The company now employs 15 at the pipe yard and will need to hire as many as 30 workers this year when the plant is completed, he said.

“We could add to that as we add more shifts,” Price told the paper. “We'll bring the material into our yard to apply the external coating at the plant.”

The pipe yard opened in May 2010. The new coating facility will avoid having to ship pipe purchased in Mexico to Houston for coating, then sending it back to South Texas, Price told the newspaper. That will help Tex-Isle keep freight costs down and offer more competitive prices, the company said.