Fluor Awarded 2 Contracts Worth $250 Million

IRVINE — Citing a resurgence in the petroleum and mining industries, Fluor Corp. said Tuesday that it has won two contracts with a combined value of $250 million.

The Irvine-based engineering and construction giant said its Fluor Daniel subsidiary was awarded a $200-million contract to convert a Corpus Christi, Tex., oil refinery operated by San Antonio-based Valero Refining Co.

The company also said that it has won a $50-million contract to engineer and help build a copper and molybdenum-processing plant 200 miles north of Santiago, Chile. The contract is with Los Pelambres Copper, a Chilean company.

Despite the contract announcements, Fluor’s stock continued its roller-coaster performance in the wake of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Its stock closed at $36.50, down 25 cents in trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday.

Fluor stock fell sharply in recent weeks as investors grew jittery that the Middle East crisis would jeopardize the company’s extensive business in that region. The stock fell from about $45 to close at $31.50 last week before staging a mild recovery.

With the Valero Refining contract, Fluor will help the unit of Valero Energy Co. upgrade the refinery to produce low-emission gasoline that can meet tougher government air-pollution standards.

Dennis Bernhart, a vice president of Fluor Daniel, the company’s chief operating unit, said the Valero contract is one of several similar projects that Fluor is working on for oil refiners across the country.

Benefiting from petroleum price hikes that began even before the current Middle East crisis, the U.S oil industry has been recovering from the disastrous slump that struck when prices plummeted in the 1980s. That has prompted oil companies to invest in building and upgrading their refineries, Bernhart said.

The Los Pelambres contract is the sixth that Fluor has received from Chilean copper producers in the last two years. In 1988, Fluor received a $300-million contract from BHP Utah International to build support facilities for a Northern Chile mine.

Fluor’s strong presence in Chile puts it in a good position to capture new business in that country, Bernhart said, as world demand for copper grows and competing copper-mining operations in Peru face disruptions from political and labor unrest.