The US administration, declining to discuss how Halliburton was awarded the contract, has admitted that the role of the company under the contract is wider than that originally announced, which was to ‘extinguish oil-well fires’.
According to The Guardian newspaper, Halliburton is already pumping oil for domestic use from fields in the north and south of the country. Washington correspondent for The Guardian, Oliver Burkeman, reported (April 18, 2003) “the Army said that Halliburton stood to make up to US$7 billion from its contract and from further potential contracts in the future in Iraq.”
The Guardian (March 12, 2003) revealed that Cheney is being paid annual payments of up to US$1million from Halliburton and is the company’s largest individual shareholder, owning stock worth US$40 million. On the announcement of the awarding of the contract Halliburton’s shares rose US54c.
Dick Cheney oversaw one of the largest privatisation campaigns in the history of the Pentagon, awarding contracts worth millions of dollars to
private sector companies, during his position as Secretary of Defence under Bush Snr. Kellogg Brown and Root Services was awarded US$8.9 million to assist with providing logistics to US troops in war zones. Once out of government following Clinton’s election, Cheney got the position as CEO of Halliburton which owns Kellogg Brown and Root, despite no previous experience in management within the oil industry.
Involved with the nefarious ‘Project for an American Century’, along with Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, the ideas known as the ‘Bush Doctrine’ were first formulated. Unbridled US dominance,
pre-emptive strikes and unilateralist ideologies were discussed, long before September 11,2001 gave them a justification.
Cheney’s actions at Halliburton, the country’s largest non-union employer, have left even some neoconservative
supporters uneasy, given their audacity. Halliburton benefits from almost US$2 billion in
taxpayer-insured loans from the US Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. Under Cheney’s tenure Halliburton increased the number of government contracts it received by 91% and led to an ‘accounting irregularity’ of about US$100 million. Halliburton is currently being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Halliburton, under Cheney, had dealings with some of the most dubious regimes around the world. Martin Lee noted in the San Francisco Bay Guardian (November, 2000), that in Nigeria Halliburton had negotiated with Shell and Chevron in environmental and human rights disasters. In Burma, Halliburton was implicated in projects resulting in the forced relocation of natives, murder and indentured labour.
Halliburton has worked with the governments of Iran and Libya, despite both countries listing on the State Department’s list of states sponsoring terrorism. Kellogg Brown and Root were fined US$3.8 million for violating sanctions against Libya.
Overseeing oil deals with Saddam Hussein during his CEO tenure at Halliburton, The Financial Times of London (May 22, 2003) reported that through subsidiaries, Cheney was involved in US$23.8 million of contracts for the sale of oil-industry equipment and services to Iraq between 1998 and 2000. Assisting the regime he described as “the world’s worst” to earn millions by exporting oil in contravention of UN sanctions.
The General Accounting Office have been asked by Congress to investigate the practices of the Energy Task Force that Mr Cheney was involved in, suggesting that Enron amongst other oil and energy companies had undue influence over the formulation of current energy policy in the US.
Given Mr Cheney’s current actions and his behaviour at Halliburton possibly a wider investigation into his oil links; the impact of these links on US domestic and foreign policy; and on the people throughout the world it has impacted upon, particularly Iraqis recovering from the recent invasion, is long overdue.