The market for seamless is very tight with limited tons available. Prices reflect the availability from mills and distributors’ inventories. This is due to the high demand in the OCTG segment, which commands a higher profit for the mills.
The mills are quoting September-October availability for welded. There have been slight increases due to the cost of HRC as well as the Trump administration’s pending Section 232 investigation. As the case now seems to be on the backburner, it’s likely we can expect a softening in the market for 4Q17.