Halliburton secretly worked with DoD long time before Iraq War

posted by ewing2001 on Sunday May 18, @06:41PM

US Defense Department Secretly Tapped Halliburton Unit To Operate Iraq's Oil Industry

by Jason Leopold

www.globalresearch.ca 17 May 2003

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/LEO305B.html

"...Months before the United States military showered Iraq with bombs and missiles, the Department of Defense was secretly working with Vice President Dick Cheney’s old company, Halliburton Corp., on a deal that would give the world’s second largest oil services company total control over Iraq’s oil fields, according to interviews with Halliburton’s most senior executives.

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Moreover, classified Halliburton documents obtained over the past month prove that the war in Iraq was as much about controlling the world’s second largest oil reserves as it did about overthrowing the regime of Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein.

The deal between the Department of Defense and Halliburton unit Kellogg, Brown & Root to operate Iraq’s oil industry, which was hatched as early as October 2002, according to the documents, and could ultimately be worth $7 billion, couldn’t have come at a better time for Halliburton.

Back in October of last year, Halliburton was saddled with a multibillion-dollar asbestos liability and the company was also suffering through a slowdown in domestic oil production. Halliburton’s stock price responded swiftly, plummeting to $12.62 in October 2002, from a high of $22 the year beforee, and rumors began to swirl that the company would be forced to file for bankruptcy.

But news of a pending war in Iraq meant that Halliburton’s financial troubles would, like Saddam Hussein’s regime, be history. Classified documents from November 2002 show that the Department of Defense recommended that The Army Corps of Engineers award a contract to Brown & Root to extinguish Iraqi oil well fires in addition to “assessing the condition of oil-related infrastructure; cleaning up oil spills or other environmental damage at oil facilities; engineering design and repair or reconstruction of damaged infrastructure; assisting in making facilities operational; distribution of petroleum products; and assisting the Iraqis in resuming Iraqi oil company operations.”

“The fact that the Department was planning for the possibility that it would need to repair and provide for continuity of operations of the Iraqi oil infrastructure was classified until March 2003,” the agency said on its web site. “This prevented earlier acknowledgement or announcement of potential requirements to the business community.”

The Army Corps of Engineers has declassified portions of some documents related to its deal with Brown & Root. The deal memo can be viewed at http://www.hq.usace.army.mil/cepa/iraq/factsheet.htm

Since October, when Halliburton was awarded the contract to repair Iraq’s oil industry, the company’s stock has nearly doubled. On Tuesday, the stock closed at $23.90..."

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