CORPORATIONS: Islands to Order

A hooting tugboat nosed up to an odd-looking 4,200-ton contraption in West Germany’s Audorf shipyards (on the Kiel Canal) last week, made towlines fast and headed to sea, outward bound for the Persian Gulf, 6,800 miles away. No ordinary barge, the contraption bristled with a 140-ft. derrick, a crane, a heliport, had air-conditioned quarters for 50 men. Built at a cost of $3,500,000, it was the most advanced mobile oil-drilling platform ever built, and a device that its owners, British Petroleum Co. and Compagnie Franchise de Petroles, hope will open up a huge new oilfield off the shores of Arabia’s Abu Dhabi sheikdom. But while the barge’s owners are foreign, the barge itself is thoroughly American, a product of the De Long Corp., one of the nation’s fastest-growing and most inventive engineering and construction firms.

Down to the Deep. In barely seven years, De Long has built a multimillion-dollar business helping oilmen explore offshore fields with massive mobile barges that can be rooted to the ocean floor solidly enough to withstand the most violent storms. Five De Long barges are already drilling in the Gulf of Mexico; another has just started operating off the coast of California; still others abuilding are slated for South America and Southeast Asia, generally at rents of $6.000 a day, including equipment. Starting with a maximum depth of 50 ft., the company has learned to build mobile rigs, that can operate in 100 ft. of water, will soon be able to take drilling crews out to 300 ft., adding millions of square miles to the wildcatters’ hunting grounds.

The pioneer behind De Long is Colonel Leon B. (“Slim”) De Long, 54. a rough-hewn Texan who ran away at 17 to join the Marines and learned his engineering the hard way as a private contractor and U.S. Army engineer. Retiring after World War II. in which he bossed 170.000 military and civilian construction people in Alaska, De Long got wind of a new kind of jack, more powerful than any before, snapped up the patent rights and brainstormed the idea of a mobile drilling platform for oilmen. Until then, the only offshore drilling was from permanent rigs that cost $1,500.000 to build, another $750,000 to dismantle. Gambling his own funds, and credit, De Long built a $250,000 prototype that was simple, seaworthy, and ready to operate soon after the tow-lines were cast off. Huge jacks lowered four sturdy caissons to the ocean floor, then lifted the entire platform into the air. After capping a well, the platform descends and moves on to another location.

Off to Greenland. Even before the oilmen could place orders, the U.S. Defense Department asked De Long to use the same principle for a 1,000-ft. dock to help speed its Thule. Greenland airbase. Standard construction methods would have taken two years. By prefabricating, De Long cut the total time to six months. Since then, the Defense Department has ordered 17 more docks worth $16 million, rushed two to replace a wood pier that burned at Whittier, Alaska, threatening military supply lines, two more to New port News, Va., when it turned out that no docks were big enough for the Navy’s 60,000-ton supercarriers. Another job: the first “Texas Tower” radar island, no miles off Cape Cod in 1955.

By last week. Colonel De Long’s brainchild had grown into $84 million worth of docks, oil rigs and seaborne platforms around the world. Consolidated Edison built one into Manhattan’s East River to receive 750 tons of coal per hour for generating electricity. Now De Long is at werk with five other companies on a $21 million contract to lay a five-mile-long sewer outfall into the Pacific off Los Angeles. And the success to date is only a starter. The Coast Guard wants prices on De Long platforms to replace 25 antiquated lightships off U.S. coasts. Another strong possibility: De Long platforms as offshore launching pads for antiaircraft missiles. Says a De Long executive: “Almost every week somebody who has heard about our platforms calls up and suggests a new application.”