The North Field is one of the largest gas fields in the world, located in northern offshore Qatar, in the Arabian Gulf. Much of the gas from this gas field is exported to Japan in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and used by many gas and electric power companies.

Tenaris provides seamless pipes from its mills across the globe, including NKKTubes, to RasGas, a joint venture company established by ExxonMobil in the U.S. and Qatar Petroleum for the North Field project. Tenaris also sends field service engineers to RasGas since January 2002 to offer technical support. Haruhiko Kinoshita of TenarisNKKTubes stayed in Qatar for this assignment from Nov. 2003 for 13 months.

The most important role of a field service engineer is to offer comprehensive support to an operation called "running" to run down a pipe to a well. The accuracy in connecting a pipe to another pipe draws special and close caution. Because premium connections used to connect these pipes are highly gas tight, advanced techniques are required. Utmost care is also necessary because the gas contains hydrogen sulfide and no leakage is allowed at all.

120 to 200 pipes are connected for a single running, which can take over 10 hours. "Various operations were being conducted on the rig, so we couldn't tell when a running would start. Since operations were around the clock for 24 hours there, sometimes a running started in midnight. I used to feel most relieved when it completed successfully and found my customers happy", Kinoshita recalls.

Away from the offshore rig, there are some more to do on land. The first task is to inspect pipes hauled up from the gas field to determine in compliance with the standard whether a connection is repairable. Also, guidance and instruction are offered in assembling Tenaris pipes in a yard of RasGas. In addition, if threading is to be done in Qatar, a field service engineer visits and witnesses the threading process at a licensee (a mill authorized by Tenaris).

In this way, with close and continued relationship with Tenaris, RasGas has been pursuing this big project well under way in the Arabian Gulf. The project is planned to continue till 2011.