Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
Crown Investments Corp. Minister Jeremy Harrison at EVRAZ on March 18. Government of Saskatchewan photo
REGINA – The day before the provincial budget was tabled, the Saskatchewan Party government announced that SaskPower and SaskEnergy would be ordering steel from embattled Regina steel mill EVRAZ. The announcement came the same week US President Donald Trump placed punishing 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian-produced steel.
The announcement was for 10,000 tonnes of steel for SaskPower transmission infrastructure and a SaskEnergy pipeline project. Supporting steelworkers was also something the opposition NDP has been calling for over the past several weeks.
But just how much is 10,000 tonnes of steel in the context of EVRAZ? Pipeline Online spoke to Mike Day, president of United Steelworkers Local 5890 on March 18 to find out.
First of all, it’s important to know that there are several mills within the overall EVRAZ facility, which itself is sometimes referred to overall as a “steel mill.”
The melt shop (steel division) makes the steel by recycling scrap steel. It is rolled into plate, coil and slab steel, much of which is sold in that form – the large rolls you often see on the back of flatdeck semis plying Saskatchewan highways. Alternatively, it is shipped by rail. A large volume of EVRAZ steel is shipped out in this manner as coiled plate steel, with other product being processed on site as pipe, generally for pipeline applications.
Steel coil prep at EVRAZ in 2009. Photo by Brian Zinchuk
Most of the large scale pipelines built in western Canada since 1960 have been built with the pipe from the EVRAZ, formerly IPSCO, facility in Regina.
For this purpose, there are various pipe mills on site. One is a two-inch mill, which makes small-diameter OCTG pipe. The 24 inch mill produces pipeline up to 24 inches in diameter by welding a single seam longitudinally along the length of the pipe (think of a roll-your-own cigarette). The last one has 5 large diameter pipe mills, which uses a spiral process to create varying diameters of pipe. The final product looks like the core of a paper towel or toilet paper roll. In recent years, a new spiral mill was added which has additional capacity.
It’s been a while since the large diameter mill has been operating. There was a short run in 2022, according to Day, but otherwise its been dormant. When the entire tubular division was running at full capacity back at the end of 2020, he said they had about 700 members in the tubular division alone.
“It’s been stagnant for almost three years now,” he said of the large diameter mill.
EVRAZ’s large diameter pipe mill in 2009. Photo by Brian Zinchuk
Have the employees and their collective institutional knowledge scattered to the winds? Day replied that approximately 85 workers transferred over to the steel division.
Noting members have lifetime recall rights, he said, “If they haven’t resigned or retired, and there’s a recall, regardless of the amount of layoff time that they’ve been on, they have the opportunity to come back.”
Asked about the announcement last week, Day said, “It’s a step in the right direction.”
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He noted the USW met with government officials back in August 2023 regarding using Canadian product. “We have and will continue to talk about that with any level of government,” he said.
“And it’s a start, I guess. We hope to see more projects and things like that. When historically, there’s been a lot of foreign steel being used in this province and across Western Canada, on lines that are being done, and we got a mill that’s sitting in our backyard and not being utilized. And there were some hurdles that Crown Investment Corp was talking to us about, things like inter provincial trade barriers and such. But we were trying to work together to get around to see how we could deal with those things.
“But it’s a start, and I’m glad that they listened to us back in ‘23. It’s been a while.”
Spiral pipe mill welding in 2009. Photo by Brian Zinchuk
Day said he understands the 24 inch mill will continue to be used for this work.
As for that 10,000 tonnes, he said, “I think it’ll be roughly four days of melting for the steel division. But the steel division is still running at full capacity.
“The impact of this is directed for the individuals working over in tubular,” he said.
“I think roughly give a couple months worth of work.”
He said currently there are about 500 Steelworkers members working at the plant across all divisions, including office and technical in addition to the steel and tubular divisions.
One of the major issues in the federal election that was announced on March 23 is new pipelines to tidewater. Both the Conservative and Liberal leaders are talking about it, despite the fact there are no companies currently proposing such a project. Enbridge’s Northern Gateway and TC Energy’s Energy East projects are both defunct, as is the Energie Saguenay natural as project which would have required its own major pipeline. But Trump’s trade war has sparked more pipeline talk in recent weeks than there has been in years.
Asked about this, Day said that when Trump implemented steel tariffs in his first term, “our federal government should have been looking at issues at then, because the playbook was started, and now he’s just pushing farther and farther. They didn’t do it. Now, they bloody will have to start doing something now, because it isn’t just affecting steel and aluminum, it’s affecting the country as a whole. So they have got to come up with something on how we can combat against the US when Trump does things like this, and we’re not so reliant on them and getting our product and the energy that Canada has to market, because the world needs it to market some way, somehow, out to the coast.
“This local has been a advocate for pipelines since I’ve been in this role, and even before, and I am a firm believer that the energy we have here, the world needs and we need to get it there. When the oil and gas sector in this country is prosperous, this country is prosperous.”
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