Page 14: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (May 1997)

MARINE FINANCE lease of deepwater drilling rigs

Transocean Rather and Transocean

Driller.

Estimated revenues generated over the one-year contract period for Transocean Rather would total $63.9 million, and the rig would undergo a $5.5 million upgrade to improve its capabilities for per- forming a subsea development drilling program in 5,000 fsw in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.

Transocean Driller is also expect- ed to be contracted for one year, commencing in August, which will provide estimated revenues total- ing $52.9 million.

Well Drilling Project Nixed

Offshore Louisiana

Rowan Companies, Inc. announced that its turnkey sub- sidiary and Pennzoil Production &

Exploration Co. have agreed to ter- minate a contract for a well being drilled offshore Louisiana on South

Marsh Island Block 97.

Rowan's first quarter earnings will reportedly be reduced by approximately $20 million as a result.

Rowan CEO C.R. Palmer said, "The drilling team on the Rowan-

Juneau gave it their best for 477 days, but after a series of under- ground blowouts, stuck pipe, lost holes and finally, an uncontrol- lable, unstable, heaving shale sec- tion, it became apparent that we would be unable to reach the con- tract depth."

Raytheon Announces First

Quarter Earnings

On April 14, Raytheon's first quarter 1997 earnings were released, showing that the

Electronics segment led the com- pany's increase in first quarter sales and operating income, as seg- ment sales rose 12.8 percent and segment operating income increased 22.5 percent, compared with the first quarter of 1996.

Raytheon's marine electronics business had strong orders in the quarter, including orders for new recreational marine products such as Apelco fishfinders, Autohelm autopilots and Raytheon GPS and electronic cartography products.

In the high seas marine electron- ics market, Standard Radio, which was acquired in 1996, has a strong

GMDSS backlog, and orders for

Raytheon Anschuetz gyrocompass- es continued at a robust pace.

The Defense Advanced Research

Projects Agency (DARPA) also awarded the Raytheon/Bath Iron

Works/SAIC team a $15 million contract for the second design phase of the Navy's Arsenal Ship.

As announced previously,

Raytheon has entered into agree- ments to purchase the assets of

Texas Instruments' defense opera- tions and to merge with Hughes

Electronics' defense operations.

Midland, Inc. Anticipates

Favorable Year-End

Earnings

El Autodesk.

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Once we've optimized the ship numerically, we design the hull form in Autoship. It's a full NURBS-based 3-D modeling program and it's automatically faired.

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Maritime Reporter/Engineering News