Fluor plans to make major announcement today.

Fluor Corp. said it plans to make an announcement in New York this morning which will have a material impact on the giant engineering and construction firm’s worldwide operations. The Fluor board of directors, which has been meeting in New York, will make the announcement at 8 a.m. EDT, prior to the opening of the New York Stock Exchange. Although Fluor officials remained tight-lipped, market observers said they expected the Irvine-based company to announce the sale of yet another subsidiary in its ongoing “asset redeployment” effort. Among the likeliest candidates for sale--in part or in whole--industry observers say, is Fluor’s sagging St. Joe Minerals Corp. “They would love to dump St. Joe if they could find a buyer,” said Herb Hart, an analyst with the San Francisco investment firm of Warburg, Rowe and Pitman. Another possibility, Hart said, may be that Fluor has reached an agreement with Royal Dutch Shell for the sale of Fluor’s remaining domestic coal holdings, the bulk of which were acquired when the company purchased St. Joe. Such a deal could total “a couple of hundred million dollars plus,” Hart said.