Parsons Lands $100-Million Oil Contract : Mideast: Kuwait retains the Pasadena firm to help rebuild war-damaged crude production capacity.

Parsons Corp., the big Pasadena-based engineering and construction firm, has landed a $100-million contract to help lead Kuwait’s drive to increase crude oil production.

The task--to manage final repair and new construction of petroleum facilities throughout the emirate--is part of the third wave of reconstruction since the Gulf War ended.

“The oil production capability has certainly been restored,” said Leonard Pieroni, chairman of Parsons. “But many of these facilities were installed on an emergency basis . . . so we will provide permanent facilities to maintain production over a long period of time.”

Kuwait is intent on increasing its production capacity from the current level of about 2 million barrels a day. Pieroni estimated that the target is “in the range of perhaps 3 (million) to 4 million barrels a day.”

In an agreement that runs through September, 1996, Ralph M. Parsons Co., a Parsons Corp. subsidiary, will do the basic engineering and manage contracts to upgrade and build new oil field gathering centers, pipelines and support facilities.

This is akin to the role of San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp., which returned to Kuwait immediately after the war to manage oil firefighting and the first phases of cleanup and reconstruction.

Despite squabbles with its fellow members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Kuwait is committed to increased production.

“World petroleum consumption in general continues to grow,” said James A. Placke, a Mideast petroleum expert with Cambridge Energy Research Associates. “And Kuwait expects to be in the petroleum export business for a very, very long time. If you’re going to be in that business, you should grow; just to protect your market share, you have to grow.”

Parsons expects to send at least 250 employees to Kuwait in the company’s first large-scale work there in recent years. The company first worked in Kuwait in 1960 on water supply, highway and rail projects. It had 100 employees in the emirate when the Iraqis invaded in August, 1990.

One U.S. employee of Parsons was held captive and then sent to Iraq before being released in December, 1990. Seven other Parsons employees who had been hiding in Kuwait City were released at the same time. All were out of Kuwait when allied forces took back the country in early 1991.