Financial Times; May 07, 2003
SECRET CONTRACT 'ALLOWS HALLIBURTON TO PRODUCE AND DISTRIBUTE OIL IN IRAQ'
By Joshua Chaffin in Washington
Halliburton, the US construction and engineering company, is permitted to produce and distribute oil in Iraq under a contract it was secretly awarded by the US government in March, according to a Congressman who has been a vocal critic of the way the Bush administration has handled the business side of the war in Iraq, Joshua Chaffin in Washington writes.
Any such conditions would appear to exceed the level of involvement in the country's politically sensitive oil sector that the company and the US government previously said had been agreed.
Henry Waxman, the Democratic Congressman for California, said the information was disclosed in a letter from the US Army Corp of Engineers. Halliburton and the Corp, which granted the contract, have said repeatedly that its terms simply allowed Halliburton to extinguish oil well fires in Iraq and provide other emergency repairs.
"These new disclosures are significant and they seem at odds with the administration's repeated assurances that Iraqi oil belongs to the Iraqi people," Mr Waxman stated in a letter to the Corp yesterday.
Halliburton said that the newly formed Iraqi oil ministry was pumping and distributing oil, and that it was merely "assisting".