THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 16, 1995 TAG: 9509160288
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 47 lines
With a cut of steel shortly after 11 a.m. today, Newport News Shipbuilding will return to being a military shipbuilder as well as a commercial one.
After 16 years of only building Navy warships, the giant Peninsula shipyard is cutting steel for its first commercial ship order since the late 1970s.
Newly installed robotic equipment in the yard's steel fabrication shop will cut a steel fastener for the keel of a double-hulled tanker, a spokeswoman said.
Newport News Shipbuilding has an order to build four double-hulled tankers for a Greek shipping company. Other buyers, who may order up to 16 more tankers from the shipyard, are waiting of federal shipbuilding loan guarantees.
With the orders, Newport News Shipbuilding has become one of the leading tanker-building shipyards in the world.
That's important to the yard's parent, Tenneco Inc., which is spending $70 million on yard improvements such as the robotics in the steel shop.
Tenneco announced Friday it will move its corporate headquarters next year to Greenwich, Conn., from Houston, where it's been for 32 years.
The move is seen as raising the diversified holding company's profile on Wall Street and with banks, investors and the government. Tenneco also has interests in natural gas, packaging and auto parts.
As part of that effort to shed its image as a Texas energy company and be recognized as a world-class conglomerate, Tenneco is considering changing the names of its subsidiaries to include the Tenneco name, Thursday's Houston Chronicle reported.
Commercial shipbuilding will help sustain the yard's shrinking work force of more 19,000. Several years ago, the yard's employment stood at just under 30,000.
But Newport News Shipbuilding needs a lot of tanker orders to replace a $3.5-billion aircraft carrier order. The Greek vessel order is worth only about $152 million to the shipyard - about $38 million a tanker. MEMO: Bloomberg Business News and Knight-Ridder Financial News contributed to
this report.
by CNB