Halliburton Co

Halliburton Co. executives ordered a big-screen television and 10 large tubs of tacos, chicken wings and cheese sticks delivered to Iraq for last year's Super Bowl, then billed U.S. taxpayers for their party, according to a lawsuit unsealed Friday.

Despite a Pentagon probe into alleged overcharging for fuel delivered to Iraq, the Army awarded Vice President Dick Cheney's former company a contract Friday to rebuild Iraq's oil industry. Halliburton won a competitive bid to rebuild the oil industry in southern Iraq, a contract worth up to $1.2 billion over two years, the Army Corps of Engineers said. Last March, shortly after the U.S.

The Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general has decided to investigate a whistle-blower's complaint about the Bush administration's handling of hydraulic fracturing, an oil- and gas-drilling technique pioneered by Halliburton Co. The review was requested by Democratic lawmakers following a Los Angeles Times report in October that included the EPA employee's challenge of an agency study that found hydraulic fracturing posed "little or no threat" to drinking water.

Halliburton Co. agreed to pay a $7.5-million fine for alleged accounting irregularities in a case that pulled Vice President Dick Cheney off the campaign trail to provide sworn testimony to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the government and the company said Tuesday. The commission accused Halliburton of improperly failing to disclose a change in its accounting practices in 1998 that boosted its bottom line. Cheney was chief executive at the time. The company acknowledged no wrongdoing.

Halliburton has systematically wasted U.S. taxpayer dollars in its operations in Iraq and Kuwait, according to two of the company's former employees who have spoken to congressional investigators. The two, one of whom is to testify before a Democratic panel today, told investigators from the office of Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) that Halliburton supervisors created a culture of overspending in the firm's operations under a $3.7-billion contract to provide food and lodging to U.S.

Halliburton Co. agreed Thursday to buy Gearhart Industries Inc. for about $277 million in cash and stock in a deal that will give Halliburton a bigger foothold in "wire-line" oilfield services. Wall Street and industry analysts applauded the definitive merger agreement, which still must be approved by shareholders and debtors. But a major holder of Gearhart debt, oil-rig contractor Energy Service Co., indicated that it would not give up its own efforts to take over Gearhart.

The Pentagon's effort to rebuild Iraq came under the sharpest fire yet Wednesday from critics who described a process rife with poor oversight, questionable spending and long delays that endanger the country's security. A government audit memo and a briefing given to congressional Democrats indicated systematic problems in the contracts awarded to Halliburton Inc., the largest contractor in Iraq. And a senior U.S.

Halliburton Co. will pull out of Iran after its current contracts there are wound down, its chief executive said Friday. "The business environment currently in Iran is not conducive to our overall strategy and objectives," Chief Executive Dave Lesar said in a conference call. The Houston-based company, formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, has been criticized for its work in Iraq, where it is the largest private contractor with revenue totaling more than $10 billion.

Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, said Friday that it fired two employees who allegedly accepted kickbacks in return for helping a subcontractor overbill the Pentagon's Iraq reconstruction program by $6.3 million.

Halliburton Co. will retain a no-bid contract in Iraq longer than expected, the Bush administration said Wednesday, citing sabotage of oil facilities for delays in replacement contracts. Halliburton's contract, valued at $1.59 billion so far, will be extended until December or January while the government receives and evaluates revised bids for replacement work that could total $2 billion.

Halliburton Co. is placing more resources in the growing Eastern Hemisphere market, a shift that contributed to a nearly 5% rise in fourth-quarter profit, the Houston oil field services provider reported Monday. Net income rose to $690 million, or 75 cents a share, compared with $658 million, or 64 cents, during the final three months of 2006. Quarterly revenue rose 19% to $4.2 billion from $3.5 billion. Halliburton's revenue from the Eastern Hemisphere accounted for nearly 42% of total sales last year, up from 38% in 2006.

One of the U.S. government's largest military contractors will pay $8 million to settle 6-year-old claims that it overcharged the Army for construction and other support services in the Balkans, the Justice Department said. KBR, a subsidiary of Houston-based Halliburton Co., was accused of double-billing the government and ordering unusable products while helping build Camp Bondsteel in Serbia's Kosovo province, prosecutors said.

Halliburton Co. has said it will agree to the Securities and Exchange Commission's request for more time to probe possible bribery and corruption in connection with natural gas operations in Nigeria. The oil field services conglomerate disclosed the SEC's request for a "tolling" agreement in a regulatory filing. Such an accord will delay when the legal clock starts running, or tolling, on the case under the statute of limitations -- generally five years for such investigations.

The Pentagon's largest contractor in Iraq, Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, routinely hid information about its work from the public by marking it as proprietary when it wasn't, a U.S. government report said. The company's actions were an abuse of federal contracting rules designed to protect proprietary information, said the report by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. Information as fundamental as the number of meals being served to U.S.

Oil-field services conglomerate Halliburton Co. told analysts that it planned to complete a spinoff of engineering and construction unit KBR by April. Houston-based Halliburton said in July that it would pursue a spinoff rather than a previously announced initial public offering, but Chief Executive Dave Lesar said Monday that the company believed an IPO could still be in the works because the market had improved.

Halliburton Co. said Sunday that its third-quarter net income rose 22%, thanks in part to fewer disruptions from hurricanes, which beset the oil industry last year. The Houston-based firm's engineering unit, KBR, had $2.4 billion in revenue compared with $2.3 billion in the third quarter of 2005. KBR has kept the company, once led by Vice President Dick Cheney, under lawmakers' microscope for its work in Iraq since a U.S.-led coalition invaded the country three years ago.

Halliburton Co. executives ordered a big-screen television and 10 large tubs of tacos, chicken wings and cheese sticks delivered to Iraq for last year's Super Bowl, then billed U.S. taxpayers for their party, according to a lawsuit unsealed Friday.

The Army is discontinuing a controversial multibillion-dollar deal with oil services giant Halliburton Co. to provide logistical support to U.S. troops worldwide. The decision comes after several years of attacks by critics who saw the contract as a symbol of politically connected corporations profiteering on the Iraq war.

Halliburton earned a record $2.4 billion last year, but Houston executives will forgo Texas-sized luxury when they go this week to Duncan, Okla., a rural county seat. Shareholders, who have gathered for the company's annual meeting since 2003 at Houston's lavish Four Seasons Hotel, will meet Wednesday in the modern but far humbler setting of Duncan's convention center. Halliburton Co. says it moved its meeting to this company town of 22,500 to honor its southern Oklahoma roots.

Frustrated government auditors pleaded, cajoled and finally threatened Halliburton Co. executives who repeatedly failed to comply with government reporting requirements under a key Iraq contract with a $1.2-billion potential price tag, newly released documents show. The documents, along with a report, were issued Tuesday by the Democratic staff of the House Committee on Government Reform. Rep. Henry A.