exagerated by the tax write off they took on the Dresser settlement. My take is that Hellaburnin is doing just fine, as evidenced in their earnings. It's sort of a shell game, you have this huge parent company with lots of different divisions and you play with the numbers of those divisions until you come up with the best possible outcome for all - divisions and parent company. Way, way back when I did accounting we usually tried to get the numbers of the parent company to basically be a wash - a gain from one division would be off-set by a loss in another. They did a split to put KBR under bankruptcy protection in 2002. I don't know what's all up with Hellaburnin, their accountants creativity would put my old boss's to shame.
![](http://www.avantnews.com/images/article/adopt.jpg)
It's all a game of numbers. I don't know if I'd make the leap to their lower profits being the driving force behind the "surge" or a widening of the war to Iran.
What I do find interesting is their distancing from KBR - is it an attempt to also put some distance between KBR and Cheney? The one article I posted talks about investigations swinging from Hellaburnin to KBR. :freak: Gotta make you wonder, though I don't think it will work. The investigation needs to stay focused on the initial 2001 award of the 10 year contract.
Here's an old article looking at the Cheney-Halliburton connection:
http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/1/2002/264AUSTIN, Texas -- The Securities and Exchange Commission is now investigating Halliburton -- the company formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney -- for accounting irregularities. What took so long?
Dick Cheney's record at Halliburton is one of the most under-covered stories of the past three years. When you consider all the time and ink spent on Whitewater, the neglect of the Cheney-Halliburton story is unfathomable.
The proximate cause of the SEC investigation is an "aggressive accounting practice" at Halliburton approved by the accounting firm Arthur Andersen -- a little matter of counting revenue that had not yet been received, $100 million worth. The New York Times reports two former executives of Dresser Industries, which merged with Halliburton in 1998, say Halliburton used the accounting sham to cover up its losses. Dresser may have thought it got a bad deal in that merger because of that $100 million "anticipation" on the credit line, but the deal turned out to be much more sour for Halliburton.
Cheney bought himself a former Dresser subsidiary facing 292,000 claims for asbestos-caused health problems. He said at the time the merger was "one of the most exciting things I've ever been involved in" and predicted it would benefit Halliburton's customers, employees and shareholders. The first thing that happened was Halliburton eliminated 10,000 jobs. (It was always amusing to hear Cheney on the campaign trail in 2000 claiming he had been out in the private sector "creating jobs.")
According to executives at Halliburton, Cheney knew about the asbestos liability before the merger and considered the risk. Because of the liability, Halliburton's stock has fallen from over $60 to under $20. In January, the company had to deny rumors it was going into bankruptcy. In other words, Cheney pretty well ruined the business. Of course, what the company wants to do now is have Congress pass a new law limiting asbestos liability.
Even more interesting is Halliburton's governmental record under Cheney. In an August 2000 report, the Center for Public Integrity noted that Cheney had said publicly the United States should lift restrictions on American corporations in countries listed by the government as sponsoring terrorism. Hey, that was then, this is now.
more...
And a look at that 10 year contract:
http://www.publicintegrity.org/wow/bio.aspx?act=pro&ddlC=31snip>
KBR does everything from conducting or managing large construction projects, such as power plants and pipelines, to providing maintenance for existing facilities or government operations. Halliburton was founded in 1919 by Erle Halliburton, who innovated a way to fortify oil wells with cement. The company acquired offshore-platform constructors Brown & Root in 1962 and expanded worldwide through the 1990s. In 1998, Halliburton acquired oil field equipment manufacturer Dresser Industries for $7.7 billion, which had acquired the oil services company M.W. Kellogg ten years earlier. Dresser Industries became embroiled in a series of asbestos lawsuits in 2001, causing Halliburton to reorganize. In 2002, the company split its operations into two distinct entities in order to protect its assets from the asbestos litigation: Halliburton Energy Services Group, which provides equipment and services such as well drilling for the oil and gas industry, and KBR. Halliburton placed KBR under bankruptcy protection.
snip>
Still, KBR beat out DynCorp and defense giant Raytheon for the third LOGCAP contract in December 2001, which is renewable for 10 years. Though LOGCAP's total value is undefined since services are provided in response to changing military needs, as of Sept. 21, 2003, KBR had been awarded 67 task orders totaling $2.2 billion—more than $2 billion for Iraq alone. LOGCAP does not comprise all of the company's military contracts. For example, it was awarded another LOGCAP-type contract with the U.S. Navy in April 2001, spanning five years and potentially worth $300 million. That contract, too, was awarded over the protests of the General Accounting Office, which questioned the criteria used to evaluate bidders.
Iraq contracts
In the competition for the current LOGCAP contract, the Army Corps of Engineers asked competitors to develop a contingency plan for extinguishing oil well fires in Iraq. The Army chose KBR's plan in November 2001, though it remains classified.
On March 24, 2003, the Army announced publicly that KBR had been awarded five task orders in Iraq potentially worth $7 billion to implement the plan. One of the task orders, obtained by the Center for Public Integrity, required KBR to "procure, import and deliver" fuels to Iraq. In fact, the contract was awarded more than two weeks earlier, without submission for public bids or congressional notification. In their response to Congressional inquiries, Army officials said they determined that extinguishing oil fires fell under the range of services provided under LOGCAP, meaning that KBR could deploy quickly and without additional security clearances. They also said that the contract's classified status prevented open bidding.
The Army's actions came under fire by Congressman Henry Waxman, D-Calif. who, along with Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., asked the General Accounting Office—the investigative arm of Congress—to investigate whether the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Pentagon were circumventing government contracting procedures and favoring companies with ties to the Bush administration. They also accused KBR of inflating prices for importing gasoline into Iraq. In June 2003, the Army announced that it would replace KBR's oil-infrastructure contract with two public-bid contracts worth a maximum total of $1 billion to be awarded in October. However, the Army announced in October it would expand the contract ceiling to $2 billion and the solicitation period to December. As of Oct. 16, KBR had performed nearly $1.6 billion worth of work. In the meantime, KBR has subcontracted with two companies to work on the project: Boots & Coots, an oil field emergency-response firm that Halliburton works in partnership with (CEO Jerry L. Winchester was a former Halliburton manager) and Wild Well Control, both of Texas.
more "dated" dirt....