Markets

Pipe Bending for Louisiana and the Gulf South

Chemical corridor and LNG work, reachable from Tulsa by barge on the same river system.

What this region buys

The Mississippi River corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans carries one of the densest concentrations of chemical and petrochemical plants in the country, which is why the region is usually just called the chemical corridor.

South-west Louisiana, around Lake Charles and Sabine Pass, has become an LNG export centre, and LNG work brings cryogenic service with it. Cryogenic piping is stainless and nickel alloy rather than carbon steel, which changes the bending conversation from geometry to metallurgy.

Louisiana also has a working shipbuilding and barge industry along the same waterways, and marine piping is bend-heavy by nature because a hull has no straight lines.

Getting the work there

Louisiana is the one market where the water route is more direct than the road. From the Tulsa Port of Catoosa, work goes down the McClellan-Kern Arkansas River Navigation System to the Mississippi, and from there to Baton Rouge, New Orleans and the Intracoastal. That is the same river system the plant was sited for.

Load-out is part of the job on large work rather than something that happens afterwards. A bend that fits the drawing does not always fit a road, and a piece that has to be re-rigged twice on the way out costs more in handling than it did in bending. Tell us the destination at quote stage and it is planned rather than improvised.

Nothing on this page claims a specific job in this region. Spec discipline on this build is that a location page passes on real market facts and never on invented local work, so where a project is named anywhere on this site it is because it is identifiable from the photograph. The rest waits until the customer has agreed to be named.

Quoting for this market

Five numbers describe a bend: outside diameter, wall thickness, centerline radius, bend angle and the tangent length on each end. Add the material, the quantity and the code or specification and the job can be priced. The quote form takes a drawing up to 25 MB.

For Louisiana work, say early whether the piece is going by road or by water. A barge move out of the Port of Catoosa is planned differently from a truck and it changes how the part is crated and loaded. On cryogenic and LNG work, send the full material grade rather than the family, because the grade decides the temperature window the bend has to stay inside.

Tell us the delivery date at enquiry stage rather than after the order. On most jobs from outside Oklahoma the transit is the predictable part and the documentation package is not, so the date is decided by whether the testing and the certificates can be complete rather than by the miles.

Codes and paperwork this market expects

Chemical corridor work runs to ASME B31.3, with material specifications that usually govern more tightly than the code. LNG and cryogenic service adds its own material and impact testing requirements, and marine work adds classification society rules.

American Pipe Bending is an A.S.M.E. code shop holding the U and S stamps, covering Section I and Section VIII work, and American Pipe Bending, Inc. is listed in the National Board Manufacturer and Repair Directory. Alongside ASME the shop works to A.N.S.I., A.W.W.A., PFI-ES24 and MSS-SP75, and to the piping codes B31.1, B31.3, B31.4 and B16.49.

Non-destructive testing runs here to your specification: x-ray, liquid penetrant, magnetic particle, ultrasonic, Magnaflux, Brinell hardness, positive material identification, elemental analysis and hydrostatic testing, along with in-plant stress relieving. Keeping those on the same floor as the bend removes a transport leg and a handoff from the schedule, which is usually where time is lost.