Corbett: New Deal Keeps Philadelphia Shipyard In Business, Saves 1,000 Jobs

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The Corbett administration has agreed to a deal that will keep the Aker Philadelphia Shipyard in business and preserve up to 1,000 jobs.

Under the agreement, the state-controlled Philadelphia Shipyard Development Corporation will purchase $42 million in assets at the facility.

Aker will lease the assets back and will build two tanker ships.

"The good thing about that is that we now control 100-percent of the yard again. And that'll give us much more leverage down the road. If the shipyard would have closed, we would have had to address what we own and what they own," said PSDC Chairman Manny Stamatakis.

The two tanker ships will be built on "spec" – meaning there are no buyers for them yet.

But Stamatakis says he's confident that the ships will sell, noting that the original 1998 agreement that saw the facility reborn as a commercial shipyard called for the first three ships to be built on spec, all of which sold.

Reported by Tony Romeo, KYW Newsradio