Washington, Jan 17: Despite a Pentagon probe into alleged overcharging for fuel delivered to Iraq, the Army awarded Vice President Dick Cheney's former company a contract yesterday 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 dollar over two years, the Army Corps of Engineers said in a statement.
The Army gave Halliburton subsidiary KBR a no-bid contract to rebuild oil infrastructure throughout Iraq shortly after the US-led invasion of Iraq last March. The Army opened that contract for competitive bids last fall and split it into one for northern Iraq and one for southern Iraq.
The northern Iraq contract, worth up to 800 million dollar, went to a joint venture of the California-based Parsons Corp. and the Australian firm Worley Group Ltd.
Just days before the Army's award to Halliburton, Pentagon auditors asked for an investigation into possible criminal wrongdoing involving the no-bid KBR oil industry reconstruction contract.
Officials in the Defense Department's office of inspector general haven't decided which investigators will do the work, the office said in a statement yesterday.
The defense contract audit agency last month questioned KBR's charges for gasoline it bought in Kuwait and trucked into Iraq for the civilian market. KBR charged more than double the price for gasoline brought in from Kuwait than it did for gas trucked in from Turkey. Auditors said KBR may have overcharged the Army by $61 million. Bureau Report