MesoCoat Considers
Brazilian Pipe Coating Partnership
MesoCoat is
considering a
four-line pipe
cladding facility in
Brazil that would
serve the country’s
rising demand
for oil and gas
pipelines in new
discovery areas
and in established
networks.
by Charles W. Thurston
Latin America Correspondent
cthurston@rodmanmedia.com
Euclid, Ohio-based MesoCoat Inc. is con- sidering a four-line pipe cladding facility in Brazil in cooperation with state petroleum company Petrobras that would serve
Brazil’s rising demand for oil and gas pipelines
in new discovery areas and in established networks. MesoCoat is currently mounting a $6.3
million one-line factory in Euclid with an annual throughput of up to 30 kilometers of pipe.
Once this pilot plant is established, the company could pursue the larger industrial format
in Brazil and other countries, company executives have said. Site work in Brazil is already
advanced, one source indicates.
Petrobras currently plans to add 230 kilometers of new oil and gas pipeline for an anticipated service date of 2014. The company has an
existing pipeline network of more than 30,000
kilometers, as the fifth largest petroleum company in the world with a market capitalization
of $140 billion. Petrobras has a history of forming partnerships with global technology leaders
to bring manufacturing technology to Brazil.
The country also has substantial domestic content rules for supplying state companies: pipe
supply in Brazil faces a 70 percent local content
threshold, a MesoCoat executive noted.
Petrobras in January 2011 signed
a cooperation agreement with
MesoCoat to test the latter’s exterior and interior pipe coatings. In
April, Brazil’s Central Bank reported that Petrobras and MesoCoat
had together registered foreign capital in the country.
MesoCoat’s parent company
Abakan Inc, of Miami, secured a low-interest $1 million loan in October
from Ohio’s Innovation Ohio Loan
Fund to build out the pilot plant.
The company also has received U.S.
Department of Energy funding for
the proving of the company technology. MesoCoat’s process is plasma
arc-fired cermet – mixed ceramic and metallic
elements – which the company claims can be
deposited at a thickness of 20 micrometers at
a speed of one-fortieth of competing welding
clad processes, and at a 20 percent savings over
competing processes. The coatings are projected
to increase the life span of the underlying pipe
by a factor of three to 20 years. Among institutions that have helped develop and test the
MesoCoat’s CermaClad technology is the U.S.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Metal cladding for wear and corrosion
protection is a $3.8 billion global market of
which approximately 50 percent is for coating
steel pipes which are used in the oil and gas,
oil sands, mining and processing industries,
according to a MesoCoat statement. The company also suggests that this market will double
over the next four years since many new oil and
gas discoveries are in more corrosive environments. In Brazil, an estimated 80 percent of all
reserves are located in so-called “sour” environments. MesoCoat is also attempting to reduce
the diameter of pipe into which its coating
equipment will fit, and currently can coat the
inside of a 7. 5 inch diameter pipe.
Among competitors for MesoCoat in Brazil
is Socotherm Brasil, originally an Italian company, which provides external and internal
coats using epoxy, polyethylene, polypropylene and polyurethane, at its factory in
Pindamonhangaba, in Sao Paulo state. CW
