Global steel pipe giant Tenaris commenced full operations Wednesday at its new $1.8 billion mill southwest of Houston in Bay City to start churning out piping for shale oil and gas wells in Texas, Oklahoma and beyond. The state-of-the-art mill is designed to bring pipe manufacturing close to the oil and gas wells and compete with Asian imports. Tenaris, an Argentinian company with its roots in Italy, opted to build its most modern and robotically automated mill in Texas to serve the ongoing shale boom in West Texas' Permian Basin and other regions.