NEWPORT NEWS SHIPBUILDING’S AMERICAN PROGRESS SELECTED AS ONE OF THE "GREAT SHIPS OF 1997"

NEWPORT NEWS, Va., January 8, 1997 – The American Progress, a double-hulled product tanker designed and built by Newport News Shipbuilding (NYSE: NNS) for Mobil Oil Corporation has been named one of the "Great Ships of 1997" by the international magazine Maritime Reporter and Engineering News.

The 46,000 deadweight-ton American Progress, delivered to Mobil in September 1997, is the first double-hull vessel built in a U. S. shipyard to standards of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which requires all ships carrying petroleum products in U. S. coastal waters to be double-hull by 2015. It is also the first ocean-going petroleum tanker built in the U. S. in more than a decade. The ship is currently transporting gasoline and distillates primarily from Mobil’s Beaumont, Texas refinery to its markets in Florida.

American Progress was selected for inclusion in the "Great Ships of 1997" issue by an independent panel of maritime consultants and journalists. Of the 14 ships featured, it is the only ship built in an American shipyard. Newport News Shipbuilding currently has contracts for eight more Double Eagle tankers.

Newport News Shipbuilding is America’s premier shipbuilding company with annual revenues of approximately $1.8 billion and 18,000 employees. The company is the leader in the design and construction of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines for the U. S. Navy and produces a variety of ships for domestic and international customers.