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For those who
didn’t hear this on their evening news.
Halliburton
Out of Race for Iraq Deal
By
Jonathan Wright @ http://www.reuters.com/financeNewsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=01SS5Y3N1L04ECRBAE0CFFA?type=businessNews&storyID=2469627 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Energy and construction company Halliburton
Co. HAL.N is out of the running for a massive U.S.
government contract for reconstruction in Iraq, the Agency for International
Development (AID) said on Friday. AID official Timothy Beans
told Newsweek magazine that Halliburton, once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney,
was not one of the two finalists short-listed for the contract. "I can confirm the
information that the director of our procurement office (Beans) shared with
Newsweek," said AID spokeswoman Ellen Yount. Halliburton is the
second-largest oilfield services firm in the world. The contract, which AID
is expected to award within days, is expected to be worth up to $600 million
and it covers repairing
Iraqi health services, ports and airports, and schools and other educational
institutions,
an official said. "There has
been no final decision made on who will be awarded the capital construction
contract," Yount added. Halliburton was one of
five companies invited to bid for the contract under an expedited procurement
process which was restricted to companies with security clearances. The other companies were Bechtel Group
Inc., Fluor Corp. FLR.N , Parsons Corp. and Louis Berger Group Inc.
Newsweek said it was
not clear if Halliburton removed itself from the running, was asked by the Bush
administration to do so or if its bid was not considered competitive. But it quoted Beans as saying: "If
I got a phone call from anybody putting any political pressure on me, I would
report it immediately to Natsios, as I've been instructed to do." A Halliburton
subsidiary, Kellogg Brown and Root, also known as KBR, said on Monday it had
won a U.S. government contract to assess and extinguish oil well fires in
Iraq. Halliburton has a long
history of involvement in military logistical support for the U.S. government. A U.S. lawmaker wrote
to the military on Wednesday asking why it had awarded the contract to
KBR. In a letter to the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers, Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, sought details of
the wartime contract, and inquired why the administration had not allowed other
companies to bid on it. The restricted
invitations to bid for the Iraqi contractors has also angered foreign
companies, although the money will come from U.S. taxpayers, not from any Iraqi
source. |
