Oil rig maker needs up to 2,000 welders

If you're a welder in Texas, here's some great news...From the Fort Worth Star-Telegram

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Keppel AmFELS, Inc., which makes and repairs offshore oil rigs, on Thursday announced plans to hire hundreds of welders and skilled laborers at the Port of Brownsville.

Gilbert Elizondo, the company's vice president of human resources, said the company plans to hire between 500 and 700 workers.

A spokesman for Cameron Works, a county-run job training and placement organization, said 2,000 workers could be hired there by the end of two years.

"We are opening our centers and expecting quite a flood of applicants for these jobs," Rey Guevara said in a story in Friday's editions of The Brownsville Herald.

Elizondo did not say what companies were contracting with AmFELS for new rigs. He said the orders occurred during the past three weeks.

"We're excited and we're very busy," Elizondo said. "You could imagine the economic spin-off when you have guys that can make anywhere from $7.50 to $12 an hour and with overtime, you start talking about serious money."

AmFELS now has about 800 employees and is the county's largest private employer.

It is a subsidiary of Singapore-based Far East Levingston Shipbuilding Ltd.