A new report from research company Freedonia Group predicts that global demand for oil and gas pipeline materials will increase by 5.3 percent on an annual basis through 2017. The main driving forces behind the growth of the market are rising energy needs all over the globe and a spike in offshore drilling, the report noted.
As drilling expands and the production of oil and gas continues to grow, there is increasing demand for systems that can gather and transport this output. Freedonia Group expects that globally demand for pipe will reach a total of 51.8 million metric tons by 2017, compared to the 40 million metric tons recorded in 2012.
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The world's biggest market for pipeline materials is currently North America, which is predicted to account for 29 percent of the global demand in 2017, with demand growing by 4.6 percent annually to 15.1 million metric tons. Despite the fact that North America will continue its robust growth in oil and gas extraction, its pipeline systems are quite mature and well developed. This is the main reason why the report predicts that by 2017 its position as the biggest consumer of pipeline materials will be taken away by Asia. According to Freedonia, demand in the Asia-Pacific region will soar by an annual average of 5.7 percent through 2017, reaching 15.2 million metric tons of pipe.
The fastest growing market will be Central and South America, where demand is set to grow by an annual 6.1 percent, to 3.3 million metric tons in 2017, FuelFix website reported.
