Steel Prices are way too low. Why? Because there is a huge "hidden" demand that will soon make itself apparent. Most of the US oil industry infrastructure is way too old, far beyond it's average design lifetime. Drilling rigs, wellhead equipment, pipelines, tankers, refineries, storage tanks, retail infrastructure is all very, very old and facing imminent collapse and lack of reliability. [1]
Rust never sleeps, and, it never has been sleeping over the last 100 years of oilfield infrastructure development.
However, the Obama administration seems to be sleeping through the warning signs of the extreme deterioration of oil industry steel infrastructure, meaning that no funds from the latest "stimulus bill" are allocated for steel replacement. Industry analysts agree that 50 to 100 Trillion dollars of oilfield infrastructure replacements will be necessary to keep the oil industry supplying the US with it's major source of energy[2].
Oilfield steel deterioration is so bad that millions of jobs could and should be created to meet the need. Steel prices will rise accordingly.
