Saudi Steel Pipe Company (SSP) has long been recognised as the Kingdom's premier manufacturer of black and hot dipped galvanised steel pipes and has the distinction of being the first mill of kind to be ISO-certified in Saudi Arabia.

SSP is a joint venture between Saudi entrepreneurs Rabiah & Nassar Company, Al Khorayef Sons Company and Mr Fahd Mohammad Al-Saja and South Korea's Shinho Steel Company. The factory and head office are in Dammam's Second Industrial City. The company is said to have cornered 70 per cent of the Saudi market. SSP has a capacity of 80,000 tonnes per year (tpy) with products ranging in size from half an inch to four inches in diameter across a wide range of wall thickness.

"SSP took a bold technological leap forward with the startup of their state-of-the-art plant that moved the company into API (American Petroleum Institute) 5L in support of the oil and gas industry," a company spokesman said. "After careful study of the available technologies, the company chose a solid state HFI welding technology for the manufacture of 80,000 tonnes of 4"-16" product across the full range of APl grades and wall thickness."

The company has enjoyed steady growth since its inception in 1980 and has successfully satisfied many needs within the Kingdom, and across 20 export markets, for high-quality welded steel pipe.

As a testimony to superior product and process performance, the company won the seal of approval from the American Petroleum Institute and Underwriters Laboratories in the US as well as approvals by Saudi Aramco and the Royal Commission. The company has been an ISO-certified manufacturer since 1995 and its products meet or exceed the requirements of Ansi, BS (British Standards), JIS, and Saso. The move to API and related-industry standards was seen as a natural progression by the management of SSP. SSP's new factory was designed and engineered by DMS, France, with the technical assistance of Shinho. At the heart of the system is a solid state high-frequency induction-welding system provided by Elva Induksjon, which incorporates a sophisticated Continuous Electronic Process Control System to continually monitor the critical components of the welding process. This and many other advanced technologies are aimed at ensuring that the products from the mill are of the highest quality and reliability.

"Though the primary objective for the products of this new facility is to service the needs of the oil and gas industry, it is expected that SSP will meet and exceed the demands of ASTM A53 (Grades A&B and BS 1387) in meeting a wide variety of water, water well casing, structural, commercial, piling and construction needs," the spokesman said.

SSP's commitment to product reliability begins with precise documentation of raw materials and continues through each step of manufacturing to a finished product staged for shipment.

"Each and every size, grade and wall thickness of pipe is tracked electronically (by computer) through 10 stages of production. Within the system there exists a wide range of reports available as part of conformance to API and ISO documentation requirements and individual customer's needs," the spokesman said.

Beyond material traceability, another vital element of process control is monitoring and controlling critical variables in the welding process itself. "It is well recognised that the key to consistent weld quality is the maintenance of proper welding current, line speed, temperature and power," the spokesman observed. "These variables are followed and recorded on a continual basis through the production cycle with proper setting having been established in a rigorous sampling programme against an ideal metal flow angle. SSP's technical staff is always available to discuss the significance of our process control practices as they will impact product quality."

Critical welding variables monitored and controlled are power, current, temperature, line speed, efficiency K-factor and metal flow angle.

Beyond the commitment to product reliability through process control, SSP has invested heavily into building a world-class metallurgical laboratory with all the tools essential for both innovative product development and comprehensive product quality testing and evaluation.

A team of experienced engineers and technicians is on hand to provide technical support to both customers and SSP's production group. Among the tools at their disposal is a full-range spectrometer for chemical analysis of raw materials and pipe product. Additionally, a state-of-the-art universal testing machine allows for an array of bending, tensile, elongation and flattening tests. The lab also performs Charpy impact tests, metallurgical examinations and an assortment of other tests, including HIC (Hydrogen Induced Cracking) and SSCC (Sulfide Stress Cracking Corrosion) evaluations, in accordance with industry or customer specifications.

Applications for large-diameter pipes cut across a number of industries and include liquid and gas hydrocarbons, water and other liquids, steam, compressed air and other gases, well casing, pump column pipes, piling industrial frames, structures, space frames, light poles, airport and large structures and transmission lines towers.

The key process features for manufacturing large-diameter pipes are coil joining (the process function being strip takeoff and end-to-end welding); accumulator (200 tonnes in process strip storage); edge milling (machine hot rolled edges to precise geometry); linear forming (gradual and systematic cold forming operation); high-frequency induction welding (use of inducting coil to obtain even heating of strip edge for proper welding); continuous process control (power current, temperature, line speed, efficiency K-factor, metal flow angle); in-line ultrasonic testing (nine-point examination of weld quality subsequent to welding process); seam annealer (post-weld normalising of bond line and heat-affected zone); off-line product inspection and testing (various quality stations follow final sizing/cutoff; flattening, hydro test, full body UT etc); metallurgical laboratory (full service testing and analysis); tube stacking system (product tracking from uncoiler through finished goods).

The company also makes scaffolding tubes and carbon steel tubes for light structural and other general purposes as well as square and rectangular pipes and commercial grade steel tubes suitable for screwing to BS21 pipe threads.

The applications for commercial pipes are steel furniture, hand-rails, ceilings, water irrigation and nipples, fences, trolleys and dairy houses. Discussing joints used for pipe connections, an SSP text says galvanised pipes are usually connected with socket couplings. Recent technological advances have made welding highly economical and dependable. Welded joints are therefore used most extensively for black pipe connections.

Flanges and breakaway signposts are welded onto pipe ends and connected with each other by fastening with bolts. The victaulic joint is generally used in applications similar to those for flanges.

Unlike flanged joints, however, they have very high flexibility and can withstand considerably high pressure as well as bending, expansion and contraction of the pipe. Straub coupling is the simplest and most durable pipe joint with flexibility and accomplished by joining two plain-ended pipes in an easy and quick installation. It is suitable for building construction and civil engineering, gas and water supply, sewage treatment, industrial plants, power plants and ship building, among other things. Saudi Steel Pipe Company markets its products through its main sales offices in Dammam, Riyadh, Jeddah and Qassim and through its network of distributors in Saudi Arabia, other Gulf, Arab and neighbouring states and places as far as the US and Canada.

SSP made a significant contribution to Kingdom Centre in Riyadh, providing some 50km of pipes of various sizes for a variety of uses.

From basement to topmost floor, its maximum safety rigid steel conduit pipes and carbon steel pipes curl through Kingdom Centre to provide safety and transmission.

The threaded conduit pipes Ñ made of hot-dipped galvanised rigid steel to the level of Ansi (American National Standard Institute) C80. 1-1994/UL-6 Ñ accommodate cables for the building's electrical system and grant protection against possible fire hazards and physical abuse.

They also offer more resistance to corrosion than any other metallic conduits. Among the advantages that Kingdom Centre will enjoy are greater resistance to mechanical or electrical damage, stronger mechanical support, better protection under exposure to the sun, sandstorms and strong wind, better dissipation of heat, better grounding and greater protection against short-circuit fires. Kingdom Centre has also installed a maze of SSP carbon steel pipes for ordinary piping. They provide transmission for chilled water and the fire-fighting and fire-protection system.