The Case Against Haliburton
“We were robbed
blind by Haliburton et al In the Iraq War Money grab.”
I see comments like this in my discussions sometimes, the trouble being there is never any factual information to support these claims. I don’t trust them because by and large, I’ve found these types of statements to be nothing but political hit pieces, with the claims highly exaggerated or even false.
So I finally decided to look for myself. For my analysis here, I gave “gold-star” awards for “good” behavior, and demerits for the not-so-good. Also, I’m skipping over most of the early history.
Just a brief summary: for about the first 80 years of its existence, the corporation was just a corporation. Then as you’ll see, around 2000, something changed.
1) “ In 1919, Erle P. Halliburton started the New Method Oil Well Cementing Company (HOWCO), the purpose being to bring wild gas wells under control.”
Nothing sinister about that: In fact, unbeknown to HOWCO, they were staving off an environmental disaster.
2) “ The company began to experiment with new technologies to help their services – for example, beginning in 1965 a pilot operation of a computer network system – the first such installation in the oilfield services industry.”
Haliburton is now an active innovator. Nothing sinister about that either.
3) “In 1975, it responded to environmental concerns by working with the nonprofit Clean Gulf Associates to contain and clean up oil spills.”
A possible demerit here, except that it says Haliburton worked to contain and clean up oil spills. Gold star cancels out demerit.
4) “In 1976, Halliburton established the Halliburton Energy Institute in Duncan, Oklahoma, to provide an industry forum for disseminating technical information.”
So here we see “greedy” Halliburton openly sharing it’s knowledge. Award of one gold-star.
5) “Throughout the 1980s, Halliburton's subsidiaries continued their projects around the world, even in countries once considered enemies. Equipment was provided for the first multiwell platform offshore China, and an Otis Engineering team controlled a gigantic Tengiz field blowout in the Soviet Union.”
Nothing sinister here.
6) “Following the end of Operation Desert Storm in February 1991, the Pentagon, led by then defense secretary Dick Cheney, paid Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root Services over $8.5 million to study the use of private military forces with American soldiers in combat zones.”
This could be a possible smoking gun. After all, $8.5 million seems like quite a lot of money, except when you compare it to the $61 billion cost of the First Gulf War. That $8.5 million is only .01393%.
But for sake of argument, even though Haliburton did nothing illegal, and the fact that Dick Cheney is mentioned along with Haliburton, we’ll give Haliburton a demerit.
What’s not mentioned by the Haliburton detractors, is that during this same time, “Halliburton crews also helped bring 725 burning oil wells under control in Kuwait.” Once again, a gold-star cancels out the demerit.
7) “In 1995, Cheney replaced Thomas H. Cruikshank, as chairman and CEO.”
No crime there, though there’s plenty of baseless accusation about Cheney. A few weeks ago, a person told me he had “30 years of evidence” that Cheney was a worse liar then Bush. I said ok, let’s see it. Then came the excuses, “Well, I gave away my books” … “I’m computer illiterate,” etc, etc, etc.
8) “In the early 1990s, Halliburton was found to be in violation of federal trade barriers in Iraq and Libya, having sold these countries dual-use oil drilling equipment and, through its former subsidiary, Halliburton Logging Services, sending six pulse neutron generators to Libya. After having pleaded guilty, the company was fined $1.2 million, with another $2.61 million in penalties.”
Three clear demerits, one for each nation. The 1976 gold-star eliminates one. Two demerits remain.
9) “During the Balkans conflict in the 1990s, Kellogg Brown-Root (KBR) supported U.S. peacekeeping forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Hungary with food, laundry, transportation, and other life-cycle management services.”
Nothing sinister here, even though there are some who consider the halting of genocide to be a “War Crime.”
10) “ The Wall Street Journal reported in 2001 that a subsidiary of Halliburton Energy Services called Halliburton Products and Services Ltd. (HPS) opened an office in Tehran … Halliburton, may have violated the Trading with the Enemy Act … No legal action has been taken against the company or its officials.”
This was while Cheney was still CEO. The reason no action was taken, was that the subsidiary was incorporated in the Cayman Islands and is "non-American." This judge penalizes Haliburton with a third demerit.
- - - - - -
From this point on, questionable actions by Haliburton seem to increase, though some of the accusations don’t have citations.
For sure are the $2.4 million in bribes to a Nigerian official in order to receive favorable tax treatment.
Worse were the grounds for termination in the Balkans if any BRS employee spoke of Dick Cheney's being CEO. To my way of thinking, only the guilty have something to hide.
Most interesting to me was the failure of Haliburton’s “Restore Iraqi Oil” pipeline across the Tigris. “ … against the advice of its own experts, Halliburton attempted to dig a tunnel through a geological fault zone. The underground terrain was a jumble of boulders, voids, cobblestones, and gravel and not appropriate for the kind of drilling Halliburton planned. ‘No driller in his right mind would have gone ahead,’ said Army geologist Robert Sanders when the military finally sent people to inspect the work.”
And it just goes on and on.
11) “Halliburton pleaded guilty to destroying evidence after the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster; the company destroyed computer simulations it performed in the months after the accident, simulations that contradicted Halliburton's claim that it was BP who had not followed Halliburton's advice. BP had employed Halliburton to oversee the process by which cement is used to seal pipes in oil and gas wells, thereby preventing leaks. Government investigators had ordered companies involved in drilling the well to preserve all relevant evidence.[47] Halliburton director Anthony Badalamenti in Texas has been charged for deleting data related to the deadly BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in September 2013.”
12) “In early December 2010, the Nigerian government filed corruption charges against Cheney in connection with his role as the chief executive of Halliburton. The case relates to an alleged $182 million contract involving a four-company joint venture to build a liquefied natural gas. Earlier in 2009, KBR, a former subsidiary of Halliburton, agreed to pay $402 million after admitting that it bribed Nigerian officials, and Halliburton paid $177 million to settle allegations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission without admitting any wrongdoing. In mid-December 2010, the case was settled when Nigeria agreed to drop the corruption charges against Cheney and Halliburton in exchange for a $250 million settlement.”
13) “The Federal Contractor Misconduct Database details 10 instances of misconduct since 1995 under which Halliburton has agreed to pay settlements of $791 million. A further 22 instances of misconduct relate to the company's former subsidiary KBR.
So by my own “scientific” rating system, I declare that the score is: Demerits = 1,000,000 / gold-stars = 0. Not a good thing at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halliburton
I see comments like this in my discussions sometimes, the trouble being there is never any factual information to support these claims. I don’t trust them because by and large, I’ve found these types of statements to be nothing but political hit pieces, with the claims highly exaggerated or even false.
So I finally decided to look for myself. For my analysis here, I gave “gold-star” awards for “good” behavior, and demerits for the not-so-good. Also, I’m skipping over most of the early history.
Just a brief summary: for about the first 80 years of its existence, the corporation was just a corporation. Then as you’ll see, around 2000, something changed.
1) “ In 1919, Erle P. Halliburton started the New Method Oil Well Cementing Company (HOWCO), the purpose being to bring wild gas wells under control.”
Nothing sinister about that: In fact, unbeknown to HOWCO, they were staving off an environmental disaster.
2) “ The company began to experiment with new technologies to help their services – for example, beginning in 1965 a pilot operation of a computer network system – the first such installation in the oilfield services industry.”
Haliburton is now an active innovator. Nothing sinister about that either.
3) “In 1975, it responded to environmental concerns by working with the nonprofit Clean Gulf Associates to contain and clean up oil spills.”
A possible demerit here, except that it says Haliburton worked to contain and clean up oil spills. Gold star cancels out demerit.
4) “In 1976, Halliburton established the Halliburton Energy Institute in Duncan, Oklahoma, to provide an industry forum for disseminating technical information.”
So here we see “greedy” Halliburton openly sharing it’s knowledge. Award of one gold-star.
5) “Throughout the 1980s, Halliburton's subsidiaries continued their projects around the world, even in countries once considered enemies. Equipment was provided for the first multiwell platform offshore China, and an Otis Engineering team controlled a gigantic Tengiz field blowout in the Soviet Union.”
Nothing sinister here.
6) “Following the end of Operation Desert Storm in February 1991, the Pentagon, led by then defense secretary Dick Cheney, paid Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root Services over $8.5 million to study the use of private military forces with American soldiers in combat zones.”
This could be a possible smoking gun. After all, $8.5 million seems like quite a lot of money, except when you compare it to the $61 billion cost of the First Gulf War. That $8.5 million is only .01393%.
But for sake of argument, even though Haliburton did nothing illegal, and the fact that Dick Cheney is mentioned along with Haliburton, we’ll give Haliburton a demerit.
What’s not mentioned by the Haliburton detractors, is that during this same time, “Halliburton crews also helped bring 725 burning oil wells under control in Kuwait.” Once again, a gold-star cancels out the demerit.
7) “In 1995, Cheney replaced Thomas H. Cruikshank, as chairman and CEO.”
No crime there, though there’s plenty of baseless accusation about Cheney. A few weeks ago, a person told me he had “30 years of evidence” that Cheney was a worse liar then Bush. I said ok, let’s see it. Then came the excuses, “Well, I gave away my books” … “I’m computer illiterate,” etc, etc, etc.
8) “In the early 1990s, Halliburton was found to be in violation of federal trade barriers in Iraq and Libya, having sold these countries dual-use oil drilling equipment and, through its former subsidiary, Halliburton Logging Services, sending six pulse neutron generators to Libya. After having pleaded guilty, the company was fined $1.2 million, with another $2.61 million in penalties.”
Three clear demerits, one for each nation. The 1976 gold-star eliminates one. Two demerits remain.
9) “During the Balkans conflict in the 1990s, Kellogg Brown-Root (KBR) supported U.S. peacekeeping forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Hungary with food, laundry, transportation, and other life-cycle management services.”
Nothing sinister here, even though there are some who consider the halting of genocide to be a “War Crime.”
10) “ The Wall Street Journal reported in 2001 that a subsidiary of Halliburton Energy Services called Halliburton Products and Services Ltd. (HPS) opened an office in Tehran … Halliburton, may have violated the Trading with the Enemy Act … No legal action has been taken against the company or its officials.”
This was while Cheney was still CEO. The reason no action was taken, was that the subsidiary was incorporated in the Cayman Islands and is "non-American." This judge penalizes Haliburton with a third demerit.
- - - - - -
From this point on, questionable actions by Haliburton seem to increase, though some of the accusations don’t have citations.
For sure are the $2.4 million in bribes to a Nigerian official in order to receive favorable tax treatment.
Worse were the grounds for termination in the Balkans if any BRS employee spoke of Dick Cheney's being CEO. To my way of thinking, only the guilty have something to hide.
Most interesting to me was the failure of Haliburton’s “Restore Iraqi Oil” pipeline across the Tigris. “ … against the advice of its own experts, Halliburton attempted to dig a tunnel through a geological fault zone. The underground terrain was a jumble of boulders, voids, cobblestones, and gravel and not appropriate for the kind of drilling Halliburton planned. ‘No driller in his right mind would have gone ahead,’ said Army geologist Robert Sanders when the military finally sent people to inspect the work.”
And it just goes on and on.
11) “Halliburton pleaded guilty to destroying evidence after the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster; the company destroyed computer simulations it performed in the months after the accident, simulations that contradicted Halliburton's claim that it was BP who had not followed Halliburton's advice. BP had employed Halliburton to oversee the process by which cement is used to seal pipes in oil and gas wells, thereby preventing leaks. Government investigators had ordered companies involved in drilling the well to preserve all relevant evidence.[47] Halliburton director Anthony Badalamenti in Texas has been charged for deleting data related to the deadly BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in September 2013.”
12) “In early December 2010, the Nigerian government filed corruption charges against Cheney in connection with his role as the chief executive of Halliburton. The case relates to an alleged $182 million contract involving a four-company joint venture to build a liquefied natural gas. Earlier in 2009, KBR, a former subsidiary of Halliburton, agreed to pay $402 million after admitting that it bribed Nigerian officials, and Halliburton paid $177 million to settle allegations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission without admitting any wrongdoing. In mid-December 2010, the case was settled when Nigeria agreed to drop the corruption charges against Cheney and Halliburton in exchange for a $250 million settlement.”
13) “The Federal Contractor Misconduct Database details 10 instances of misconduct since 1995 under which Halliburton has agreed to pay settlements of $791 million. A further 22 instances of misconduct relate to the company's former subsidiary KBR.
So by my own “scientific” rating system, I declare that the score is: Demerits = 1,000,000 / gold-stars = 0. Not a good thing at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halliburton