TMK Ipsco's Vicki Avril

'In this industry, gender clearly was a hindrance. I am surrounded by men. And you have to figure out how to be taken seriously. That isn't always assumed.'

If Vicki Avril gets what she wants, be ready to jack up your thermostat . . . and your mill operating rate.

"You want a cold winter, you want the economy to pick up and you want imports to slow down," the president and chief executive officer of seamless and welded pipe producer TMK Ipsco says in sharing the latest version of her corporate wish list. "And if you get all three, it would provide us a very favorable outlook here."

With today's "extremely low" gas prices and drilling activity down 55 percent from peak levels in late summer 2008 to mid-2009, the outlook from anywhere within shouting distance of the energy patch has been far from favorable.

"These ups and downs resulted in inventory builds throughout the supply chain," Avril said. "Whether it's with the drillers, the distributors or the producers, all of us had too much inventory and nowhere to go with it. And that was further compounded by imports, primarily from China, which hit a record high just as the drilling market was shutting down."

Downers Grove, Ill.-based TMK Ipsco, which was acquired in June last year by Russia's OAO TMK from Sweden's SSAB Svenskt Stal AB after a back-to-back transaction with Evraz SA, is one of several domestic mills to take action against Chinese shipments of oil country tubular goods (OCTG) and standard line and pressure pipe. Even so, Avril sees factors beyond the unquestionable impact of imports magnifying the collapse of what was a red-hot pipe and tube market.

"It was definitely a strong market," she said. "Clearly, the drillers were concerned they would run out of pipe so they were essentially doubling up their orders to make sure they weren't going to have to shut down rigs. However, you can make a case it was not an overly strong market from an energy consumption point of view. I think speculation in oil and gas made the market more volatile and therefore worse."

Ask Avril her biggest concern and she'll answer in one word: cyclicality. "Our business is always very cyclical," she said. "To be successful, you have to minimize your fixed costs so that you have a lot of variable cost you can flex with the market environment. You must be able to adapt very quickly so you don't leave yourself overexposed as the market turns."

Avril, who grew up in Champaign-Urbana, Ill., and earned an undergraduate degree in accounting and an MBA from the University of Chicago, began her career at Inland Steel Industries, attracted by the strong reputation of the company's management program. "So while I was there, by mistake, I learned about what steel was," she laughs. "It was an excellent organization and it was largely because of the people I was surrounded by that I ended up staying at Inland 23 years." She decided to leave Inland when the Chicago-based steelmaker was acquired by Mittal Steel.

Prior to being named president and chief executive officer of TMK Ipsco in June 2008, Avril was senior vice president and general manager of Ipsco's tubular businesses in both the United States and Canada.

Has gender had an impact on the trajectory of her career over the years? "In this industry, clearly it was a hindrance," Avril said. "I am surrounded by men. And you have to figure out how to be taken seriously. That isn't always assumed. When I was younger, I was very much in the mindset you had to please. You really have to get beyond that and find who you are so you have the confidence to be a leader as opposed to a good solid worker.

"You have to be comfortable in your own shoes. Especially as a woman, you are going to be challenged every time you walk into a room of men as to whether you are a leader or not," Avril said.

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