MARKET OVERVIEW

摘要

With December import licenses and domestic estimates, we have our first look at 2011 shipment levels. In the November Report, we projected that 2011 shipments would end up at about 17.8 million tons with energy pipe and tube shipments of about 10.0 million tons and industrial pipe and tube shipments of about 7.8 million tons. The preliminary totals, based again on licenses and estimates, are 17.7 million tons in total with energy shipments of 9.9 million tons and industrial shipments of 7.8 million tons. We will comment on this again next month when we have the final numbers for the month of December. While projecting results with two unknown months and one preliminary month is not the most difficult thing to do, we believe that energy shipments were off a bit, as compared to our projection, due to a weaker drilling environment in December than we expected.