- WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- A
Democratic lawmaker Wednesday accused Halliburton, the Texas oil services
company once run by Vice President Dick Cheney, of overcharging the U.S.
government for gasoline the firm imports into Iraq.
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- Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, which
defends its pricing as fair, has a contract with the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers to rebuild Iraq's oil sector. This has included importing gasoline
products which are in short supply to the oil-rich nation.
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- "Millions of Americans want to help Iraqis but they
don't want to be fleeced [by Halliburton]," Rep. Henry Waxman, of
California, told a news conference.
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- Waxman said army documents showed that as of Sept. 18,
the United States had paid Halliburton $300 million to import about 190
million gallons (719 million liters) of gasoline into Iraq.
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- Halliburton billed the government an average price of
$1.59 per gallon (3.7 liters), excluding the company's fee of 2 percent
to 7 percent, said Waxman.
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- He said the average wholesale cost of gasoline during
that period in the Middle East was about 71 cents a gallon, a figure an
oil industry source told Reuters was accurate. That meant Halliburton was
charging more than 90 cents a gallon to transport fuel into Iraq from Kuwait
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- "When we checked with independent experts to see
if this fee was reasonable, they were stunned," said Waxman, adding
a reasonable transport cost would be 10 to 25 cents per gallon, especially
as the U.S. military was providing security.
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- Asked to comment on the claims, a Halliburton spokeswoman
defended the pricing as fair and said KBR had to transport gasoline through
a "hostile environment" into Baghdad.
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- "We use a sound procurement process which has been
approved by the government for procurement activities," said spokeswoman
Wendy Hall. "KBR continues to negotiate fair and competitive prices
to provide fuel to the Iraqi people," she added.
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- Waxman sent a letter on Wednesday to the White House
Office of Management and Budget complaining KBR was overcharging for petroleum
products.
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- "The overcharging by Halliburton is so extreme that
one expert privately called it 'highway robbery,"' he wrote.
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- Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Bob Faletti said military
auditors were closely monitoring work done by KBR and making sure the U.S.
taxpayer was not being overcharged.
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- "So far there have not been any red flags,"
said Faletti. "They have not found any material errors. There are
always small errors but there has been no defective pricing or anything
untoward," he added.
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- Halliburton has so far received more than $1.4 billion
in work in Iraq to repair and restore the country's oil industry under
a no-competition contract issued in March. In another contract providing
logistical support, more than $1.6 billion has been clocked so far, with
more in the works.
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- Halliburton's no-bid contract is set to be replaced after
the military announces the winners to two new tenders amounting to no more
$1 billion.
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- Faletti said the winners for those two contracts, one
for the north and the other for the south of Iraq, would be announced by
the end of October.
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- In a related development, New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg,
a Democrat, suggested an amendment to the $87 billion Iraq spending bill
in Congress that would prevent firms with ties to senior administration
officials from getting Iraq contracts.
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- Lautenberg said the amendment would take effect 90 days
after the bill became law which gave officials ample time to divest themselves
from financial interests in a company.
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- Cheney has strongly denied any favoritism in the Halliburton
deal in Iraq and says he has no financial interest in the company.
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- http://money.cnn.com/2003/10/15/news/international/halliburton_iraq.reut/index.htm
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