In contracts valued at $185 million, LeTourneau Technologies’ plant south of Vicksburg will manufacture and ship support components for a pair of jack-up offshore oil drilling rigs, company officials said.

Rowan Companies, the riverside yard’s Houston-based parent company, has announced its subsidiary has signed the contracts with Consorcio Rio Paraguacu to provide rig kit, design and drilling equipment for two LeTourneau Super 116E deepwater rigs. The client is a construction consortium headed by Brazil-based energy company Petrobras. 

While the rigs themselves will be built at a Petrobras facility in Brazil, the plant off U.S. 61 South will supply the leg pipe material, which is to be shipped to company-maintained facilities in Houston and Longview, Texas, said Julian Bowes, LTI’s vice president for marketing, sales and design engineering.

Delivery of the rig kits is expected this year while most of the drilling equipment will be provided in 2010.

“In this difficult environment, we are pleased to have been selected by the Brazilian consortium to provide the primary components for these new jack-up rigs,” read part of a statement by LTI president and CEO Dan Eckermann.

The Super 116E is among five current LTI jack-up rig designs and is designed to drill in up to 350 feet of water in moderate conditions, with the ability to be modified for high temperature and high pressure wells. In Rowan’s final quarterly report for 2008, terms were under re-negotiation on four such rigs under way with a separate builder in Texas.

It is the first major work announced involving planned projects for the local plant since a suspension and a cancellation in January on two 240C class rigs. That design is capable of boring into 400 feet of ocean water.

Also, it follows an announcement Tuesday that Rowan reached an agreement with Mexico’s state-owned oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos, on a 785-day contract for work to begin in the second quarter of this year on the Gorilla IV rig, delivered to sea from the Vicksburg yard in 1986. Rowan expects the contract to provide about $124 million of drilling revenues. 

With about 600 workers, the plant remains one of Vicksburg’s largest employers despite job cuts in December and January. Lower demand for infrastructure in the oil services industry was cited for the labor moves and for the shelving of plans by Rowan to spin off LeTourneau to a private company. Local plant supervisors have said project schedules have continued without major interruption throughout the corporate maneuvers.

LeTourneau began as a munitions plant in 1944. Over time, it evolved into a global leader for building movable oil rigs. Rowan acquired the yard from Marathon Inc. in 1994 after a two-year shutdown, and it reopened in September 1995.

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Contact Danny Barrett Jr. at dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com