Fluor, Raytheon Complete $1.3-Billion Deal for Thai Refinery : Joint venture: Oil facility south of Bangkok should be ready by 1995. The firms’ engineering units signed a letter of intent in March.

Two of the nation’s leading engineering firms, Fluor Corp. and Raytheon Co., said Thursday that they have completed a $1.3-billion joint venture to build an oil refinery in Thailand.

Fluor Daniel and Raytheon Engineers & Constructors, the engineering units for the companies, signed a letter of intent with Rayong Refinery Co. in March. They began preliminary work on the refinery 18 months ago.

The refinery will be in Rayong, a province 100 miles south of Bangkok. The Rayong refinery, scheduled for completion in late 1995, is a joint venture between the Petroleum Authority of Thailand and Royal Dutch Petroleum in The Hague, Netherlands.

As its economy and standard of living have improved in recent years, Thailand has become a sought-after region for such engineering projects.

“More people are buying cars there, so the demand for petroleum products has increased,” said Bill Sanderson, a senior principal of Purvin & Gertz Inc., an energy consulting firm based in Long Beach. “The country has been trying to attract refining projects so that it can produce its own petroleum products rather than importing them from other areas.”

Irvine-based Fluor and Raytheon, which is headquartered in Lexington, Mass., have teamed up on several past projects--including a multibillion-dollar petrochemical plant in Saudi Arabia in the early 1980s. Raytheon, the seventh-largest defense contractor in the country, is best known for making the Patriot missile, a defensive weapon used during the Persian Gulf War.

“Any way you slice it, this project is great for both Fluor and Raytheon,” said Mark Altman, a brokerage analyst with PaineWebber in New York. “We have every reason to believe it will be a nicely profitable contract.”

Furthermore, the project is a bit of good news for the U.S. economy, said Jack Lewis, associate director of the international business program at USC. “If Fluor and Raytheon didn’t win it, another consortium of companies would have--very likely, Japanese or European,” he said. “Given the recession, it’s nice to see a company in Southern California doing well.”

Fluor’s stock closed Thursday at $40.125, down 75 cents, in trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Raytheon’s stock closed at $61.50, down $1, also on the NYSE.