Halliburton

Basic information

Ownership status:

Publicly traded

Number of employees worldwide:

After splitting from KBR Halliburton continues to be one of the world’s largest oil and gas services companies, with nearly 50,000 employees in approximately 70 countries.

Chief executive officer:

David Lesar, President, CEO and Chairman of the Board.

Website:

http://www.halliburton.com/

Corporate accountability

Brief company history:

Halliburton Energy Services (NYSE: HAL) is an United States based multinational corporation with operations in over 120 countries. It has been at the forefront of several media and political controversies in relation to its work for the U.S. Government, its political ties, and its corporate ethics.

It is based in Houston, Texas in the United States. Halliburton opened its new headquarters in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, in March of 2007, where Chairman and CEO David J. Lesar will work and reside, to "to Focus Company’s Eastern Hemisphere Growth". Corporate offices will remain in Houston and the company will remain incorporated in the United States. The company will consider Houston and Dubai as dual headquarters.

Halliburton major business segment is the Energy Services Group (ESG). ESG provides technical products and services for oil and gas exploration and production.

Halliburton's former subsidiary, KBR, is a major construction company of refineries, oil fields, pipelines, and chemical plants. Halliburton announced on April 5, 2007 that it had finally broken ties with KBR, which has been its contracting, engineering and construction unit as a part of the company for 44 years.

Halliburton's history began in the Texas/Oklahoma "oil patch" shortly after the end of World War I.

Earl Halliburton of Tennessee came to Oklahoma to develop and refine a new process known as "oil well cementing." The process involves sending cement down an oil well to create a wall to seal-out water and other unwanted contaminants. The oil well cementing process, still used today, stabilizes the oil well and thereby allows drillers to extract oil more easily and efficiently.

Brown & Root, was established in 1919 and incorporated in Delaware in 1924. Two brothers, George and Herman Brown, and their brother-in-law, Dan Root, started the firm by paving roads. It was basically a cement company and nothing more. But the brothers soon began manufacturing complex oil platforms, dams and Navy warships.

Starting in the 1930s Brown & Root hitched its fortune in part (and vice versa) to the career of Lyndon B. Johnson, then an ambitious young congressman who helped the company secure federal contracts for a dam project back in Texas.

Halliburton and Brown and Root merged in 1963 under the name Halliburton, maintaining separate businesses inside one loose corporate structure -- the engineering and contracting side (Brown & Root) and the oil services side (Halliburton). In the late 1970s and early 1980s oil price fluctuations forced the company to more fully integrate the disparate operations into one streamlined firm.

Brown and Root rode LBJ's coattails into the Vietnam War, where it obtained numerous military construction contracts, including a contract to construct the infamous "tiger cages"

The arrival of Dick Cheney as CEO in 1995 helped the company climb the ladder of the largest federal contractors from number 73 before his arrival to the 18th-largest defense contractor. Under Cheney's tenure as CEO, Halliburton's revenue from federal government contracts nearly doubled. Government-backed loans from the Export-Import bank increased from $100 million to $1.5 billion.

Halliburton saw its revenue increase 30 percent to $16 billion in 2003, largely because of its military contracts in the middle east. Halliburton was the number one U.S. Army contractor in 2003 with the total value of its Army contracts valued at $3,731,725,648. Dan Briody, in his book The Halliburton Agenda, described Halliburton's relationship with Cheney as "the embodiment of the Iron Triangle, the nexus of the government, military, and big business that President Eisenhower warned America about in his farewell speech."

Halliburton and KBR separated once again in 2006, with Halliburton focusing on oil services and KBR continuing as a separate entity focused on engineering, construction, and military supply contracting. Halliburton moved its operational headquarters to Dubai, while remaining incorporated in Delaware and retaining offices in Houston.

(A number of books provide useful explorations of Halliburton's history, including The Halliburton Agenda by Dan Briody, Cronies by Robert Bryce, and How Much Are You Making in the War, Daddy? by William D. Hartung)

Corporate accountability:

For coverage of Halliburton and its KBR subsidiary's involvement in Iraq and other corporate accountability, see Halliburton Watch, which links to numerous reports by CorpWatch, congressional committee investigations, related books etc.

Labor:

Much of Halliburton/KBR's government business in Iraq and Kuwait, already worth tens of billions, is being carried out by the world's poor people. Many of these people are underpaid, working for wages that are one-tenth of what U.S. workers receive, thereby creating more profits on the margins for Halliburton and its subcontractors. For example, NPR reported in October 2007 a Pakistani dishwasher at a forward operating base in Diyala was being paid $1.25 an hour for two years work for the Saudi-based food-services firm, Tamimi, a KBR subcontractor.

Much of Halliburton's work is conducted by foreign subsidiaries, which means that even U.S. employees may find it difficult to file claims against the company for break of contract in places like Iraq should they wish to do so. Under Texas law, employees may not be entitled to unemployment benefits who were employed by a Halliburton subsidiary that is incorporated in a "foreign" nation. In one typical case, the Texas Workforce Commission ruled against a former Halliburton employee by concluding: "The claimant is not entitled to unemployment benefits because [Halliburton's foreign subsidiary] does not satisfy the definition for an 'American employer' under the [Texas] statute."

Financial information

Detailed financial information

Stock ticker symbol:

HAL

Location(s)

Headquarters

5 Houston Center 1401 Mckinney Suite 2400

Houston, TX, 77010

United States