Milestones Q2 1998

• Bechtel has begun work on a $390 million project to build four compressor stations along the GR1 and GR2 pipelines in the Sahara Desert for Sonatrach, Algeria's national oil company. Construction is expected to be completed by 2000.
• Bechtel is preparing an engineering and economic evaluation of biomass gasification technology for use in Weyerhaeuser Co.'s pulp and paper facilities. The evaluation, due to be completed by early next year, will analyze design and cost tradeoffs, estimate the costs associated with building a commercial-size gasification facility, and assess commercial feasibility.
• England's National Joint Council for the Engineering Construction Industry has presented its safety award to the 750-megawatt Rocksavage power plant, located at Runcorn on Merseyside. A project of Bechtel affiliate InterGen--on which Bechtel provided engineering, procurement, and construction services--Rocksavage logged more than 250,000 hours without a lost-time accident, and has since continued its excellent safety performance by achieving 1 million job hours without a lost-time accident.
• The Malaysian Construction Industry Development Board awarded Bechtel a three-year, multiproject construction license. The license--thought to be the first awarded to a wholly owned subsidiary of a foreign company--allows Bechtel to carry out electrical and mechanical construction work in Malaysia.
• Bechtel has won a contract to conduct feasibility and front-end engineering on the Paraguana Aromatics Complex, a $1.1 billion venture of Chevron Chemical Co. and Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., Venezuela's national petroleum company. Construction of the new complex is expected to begin in 1999.
• Bechtel was awarded a $150 million contract to provide environmental and engineering services to remove a variety of hazardous and toxic wastes from 50 U.S. Navy and Marine Corps installations on the U.S. West Coast. The work being performed is part of the third and latest phase of the Comprehensive Long-Term Environmental Action Navy (CLEAN) Program.
• EnergyWorks, a Bechtel Enterprises and PacifiCorp Holdings joint venture, is providing electrical power, steam, and chilled air at two bottling plants owned by Cervejarias Kaiser S.A., Brazil's fastest-growing brewer. EnergyWorks has been awarded cogeneration and utility outsourcing work, with Bechtel providing construction management services. One plant was scheduled for completion in June, the second by December 1998.
• A consortium that includes Bechtel Enterprises, Techint, Dragados, Dwyidag, and Hochtieff is one of seven groups prequalified to compete for a build-operate-transfer contract for a bridge connecting Buenos Aires and the Uruguayan town of Colonia. The project includes a 41-kilometer bridge, the world's longest over water. Cost of the project before financing and development is estimated at $1.2 billion. A final tender is expected late this year.
• The Bechtel-Setal joint venture that is building an extension to an existing Monsanto herbicide plant in Vale do Paraíba, Brazil, recently tested the facility's evaporator, inspected welds, and conducted hydrostatic tests, all with positive results. Additionally, as work crews approach 250,000 job hours, there have been no lost-time accidents.
• Bechtel is teamed with four energy technology firms that will help the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Utility Technologies investigate and develop new, cost-effective clean-energy sources and assess regulatory, environmental, health and safety, and economic issues over the next five years. The companies also will assist with an energy education program aimed at the next generation of consumers.
• Bechtel is retrofitting and expanding capacity at Chevron Chemical Co.'s Cedar Bayou ethylene and propylene plant. The two retrofit projects, worth $28 million, will expand capacity by about 8 percent, to 1.8 billion pounds per year. Retrofitting work is due to be completed by October 1998.
• Bechtel is taking the lead in a 50-50 joint venture with Brazilian contractor Andrade Gutierrez to build a 195-megawatt underground hydroelectric plant on the Alto Cachapoal River near Coya, Chile. The $276 million project is expected to be completed in 2001.
• Bechtel received a notice of provisional acceptance on its Humpuss Aromatics Phase I condensate refinery plant in northern Sumatra. The project, for PT Humpuss Aromatik, is Bechtel's first condensate refinery plant in Asia. Bechtel was responsible for process design, engineering, procurement, direct-hire construction, start-up, and initial operations for the facility.
• The $320 million expansion of Phelps Dodge Corporation's Candelaria copper operation in northern Chile has been completed eight months early and 13 percent under budget. The Bechtel-Sigdo Koppers engineering and construction joint venture also set a Chilean construction industry safety record: more than 2.5 million employee hours worked without a lost-time injury.
• The Egyptian Electricity Authority announced that a consortium including Bechtel Enterprises affiliate InterGen has been awarded a contract to build, own, operate, and transfer a 650-megawatt electric generating station near Alexandria, Egypt. Construction of the Sidi Krir facility, one of the largest private infrastructure investments ever made in Egypt is expected to begin by early 1999.
• Bechtel has begun engineering, procurement, and construction work on Equistar Chemicals, LP's Matagorda Line 4 project, an expansion of Equistar's existing high-density polyethylene facility in Matagorda, Texas. The lump-sum, 19-month project has a total installed cost of approximately $80 million. The plant is scheduled to begin operations in the third quarter of 1999.
• Chile's Compania Minera Los Pelambres Ltda. awarded Bechtel an $800 million engineering, procurement, and construction management services contract to expand the Los Pelambres copper mine in Chile to process 85,000 tons per day of sulfide ore. Bechtel will replace the mine's primary ore-crushing facility, build a 12.3-kilometer overland conveyor system and a 120-kilometer slurry pipeline, and construct a new concentrator and port facility. The entire project is expected to be completed in late 1999.
• Bechtel has sold Genuity, Inc., an Internet services provider, to GTE Internetworking, a subsidiary of GTE Corp. Bechtel acquired Genuity in late 1995, taking it from start-up company to a leader in the Internet industry.
• Bechtel was selected to design and build the $350 million Red Hills generation facility, a 440-megawatt, lignite-fired circulating fluidized bed power plant in Ackerman, Mississippi. Choctaw Generation, Inc. will own and operate the power plant; the Tennessee Valley Authority will purchase the electricity it will generate. The plant will begin operations in December 2000.
• Financing for the 700-kilometer Mayakan natural gas pipeline--Mexico's first significant pipeline development to be privately financed and owned--has been completed in a record eight months. The pipeline is being financed with a $210 million loan through the InterAmerican Development Bank and $56 million in equity from Bechtel affiliate InterGen, Trans-Canada Pipelines, Ltd., and Gutsa Construcciones.
• Bechtel Jacobs Company LLC--a company formed by Bechtel and Jacobs Engineering Group, Inc.--was awarded a five-and-one-half-year, $2.5 billion contract by the U.S. Department of Energy to manage and integrate environmental restoration at DOE facilities in Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Paducah, Kentucky; and Portsmouth, Ohio.
• Bechtel was awarded a contract to manage engineering, procurement, construction, and commissioning of the US$509 million Queensland Fertilizer project in Australia. Bechtel's work on the project is expected to be complete by December 1999.
• The U.S. Department of Defense awarded Bechtel a two-year, $7.2 million contract to design and build a technical training base and site security enhancement facility for the stockpile of nuclear weapons that the Russian government is storing at 30 sites across the nation.
• Stew Burkhammer, a Bechtel principal vice president and manager of the company's environmental, safety, and health services, received the Industrial Safety Equipment Association's 1997 Star Crystal Award. He was recognized for more than 35 years of leadership on safety and health issues worldwide, as well as work on behalf of professional associations related to safety and health. Burkhammer is CEO and chairman of the board of directors for the Safety Equipment Institute and is a member of the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration's Advisory Committee for Construction Safety and Health.
• Senior Vice President Darrell Donly is the new president of Bechtel North America. For the past two years, he has overseen work execution in North America. Donly joined Bechtel in 1975, working on a variety of mining and metals projects around the world; he later worked with Bechtel's Becon Construction Company on power and petroleum projects in the United States. Donly was named president of Becon in 1993 and was elected a senior vice president in 1996.
• Jerry Hill, meteorologist and principal environmental engineer in Houston, has been named to a three-year term on the American Meteorological Society's Committee on Meteorological Aspects of Air Pollution. The committee is working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to develop and test a replacement for air-dispersion modeling software currently used for regulatory applications in the United States and many other countries.