Halliburton

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Halliburton (nyse: HAL) is the world's second largest oilfield services corporation with operations in more than 70 countries. It has hundreds of subsidiaries, affiliates, branches, brands and divisions worldwide and employs over 50,000 people.

The company has its headquarters in the North Belt office in Houston, Texas, and in offices in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (opened March, 2007) where Chairman and CEO David J. Lesar works and resides, "to Focus [the] Company’s Eastern Hemisphere Growth." The company will remain incorporated in the United States.

Halliburton's major business segment is the Energy Services Group (ESG). ESG provides technical products and services for petroleum and natural 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 had been its contracting, engineering and construction unit as a part of the company for 44 years.

Locations
U.S. regional office locations are Anchorage, Alaska; Bakersfield, California; Denver, Colorado; Lafayette, Louisiana; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Farmington, New Mexico; Naples, Utah; and Odessa, Texas.

Major international offices are in Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina, Panama, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Algeria, Angola, Egypt, Gabon, Nigeria, Cameroon, Republic of Congo, Libya, Austria, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, United Kingdom, France, Spain, Australia, Russia, China, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan, Singapore, U.A.E., Oman, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia.

Worldwide technology centers are in Duncan, Oklahoma; Carrollton, Texas; Houston, Texas; Stavanger, Norway; Pune, India; and Singapore.

Divisions
Energy Services, the company's historical cornerstone, formation evaluation, digital and consulting solutions, production volume optimization, and fluid systems. This business continues to be profitable, and the company is one of the world's largest players in this industry; Schlumberger is a close competitor, followed by Weatherford International, and Baker Hughes. Halliburton's hydraulic fracturing method of drilling for natural gas can be attibuted to the increase in supply of natural gas supply in the U.S. thus mitigating its dependence on the supply of foreign supply of carbon based energy sources. "....the application of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technology to the shales has caused resource estimates to grow over a five-year period from a relatively minor 35 Tcf (NPC, 2003), to a current estimate of 615 Tcf (PGC, 2008), with a range of 420–870 Tcf."

With the acquisition of Dresser Industries in 1998, the Kellogg-Brown & Root division (in 2002 renamed to KBR) was formed by merging Halliburton's Brown & Root (acquired 1962) subsidiary and the M.W. Kellogg division of Dresser (which Dresser had merged with in 1988). KBR is a major international construction company, which is a highly volatile undertaking subject to wild fluctuations in revenue and profit. Asbestos-related litigation from the Kellogg acquisition caused the company to book more than US$4.0 billion in losses from 2002 through 2004.

As a result of the asbestos-related costs and staggering losses on the Barracuda Caratinga FPSO construction project based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Halliburton lost approximately $900 million U.S. a year from 2002 through 2004. A final non-appealable settlement in the asbestos case was reached in January 2005 which allowed Halliburton subsidiary KBR to exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy and returned the company to quarterly profitability. So, while Halliburton's revenues have increased because of its contracts in the Middle East, its bottom line continues to suffer.

At a meeting for investors and analysts in August 2004, a plan was outlined to divest the KBR division through a possible sale, spin-off or initial public offering. Analysts at Deutsche Bank valued KBR at up to $2.15 billion, while others believed it could be worth closer to $3 billion by 2005. KBR became a separately listed company on 5 April 2007.

Early history (as HOWCO)
In 1919, Erle Halliburton started the New Method Oil Well Cementing Company.



In 1920, Erle Halliburton brought a wild gas well under control, using cement, for W.G. Skelly, near Wilson, Oklahoma. On March 1, 1921, the Halliburton “method and means of excluding water from oil wells” is assigned a patent from the U.S. Patent Office. Halliburton invents the revolutionary cement jet mixer, to eliminate hand-mixing of cement, and the measuring line, a tool used to guarantee cementing accuracy. By 1922, the Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Company (HOWCO) was prospering from the Mexia, Texas, oil boom, cementing its 500th well in late summer.

In 1924, the Company was incorporated in Delaware, with 56 people on its payroll. The stock of the corporation was owned by Erle and Vida Halliburton and by seven major oil companies: Magnolia, Texas, Gulf, Humble, Sun, Pure and Atlantic.

In 1926, its first foreign venture began with sale of equipment to Burma and India.

Throughout the 1930s and 40s, Halliburton continued cementing across America. In 1938, Halliburton cemented its first offshore well using a truck on a barge off the Louisiana coast. In 1940, Halliburton opened offices in Venezuela and introduced bulk handling of cementing to the industry. In 1947, the Halliburton first marine cementing vessel went into service.

In 1951, Halliburton made its first appearance in Europe as Halliburton Italiana SpA., a wholly owned subsidiary in Italy. In the next seven years, Halliburton launched Halliburton Company Germany GmbH, set up operations in Argentina and established a subsidiary in England. By 1951, HOWCO had service centers operating in Canada, Venezuela, Peru, Colombia, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. Halliburton revenues top $100 million for the first time in 1952.

Erle P. Halliburton died in Los Angeles in 1957. HOWCO is at this time worth $190 million with camps all over the world. The same year, HOWCO purchased Welex, which pioneered jet perforation. Otis Engineering, an oilfield service and equipment company specializing in manufacturing pressure control equipment for oil and gas producing wells, was acquired in 1959.

As Halliburton
On July 5, 1961, the company changed its name to the Halliburton Company. In 1963, Halliburton was the first company in Oklahoma to receive the Presidential “E” for Export flag in recognition of notable contributions to foreign trade.

A 500000 sqft. manufacturing center in Duncan, Oklahoma was opened by Halliburton in 1964. The Company began to experiment with new technologies to help their services—for example, beginning in 1965 a pilot operation of a computer network system – the first such installation in the oilfield services industry. In 1966, Workers break ground for a new wing at the Research Center in Duncan that triples the space for the Chemical Research and Design Department. In 1968, an automated mixing system for drilling mud is developed by Halliburton, primarily for use offshore. Gearhart Industries (acquired by Halliburton Energy Services in 1989) introduced the first digital computer logging system in 1974.

In 1969, Halliburton began construction of a base camp at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s North Slope.

In 1975, Halliburton responded to 1970s’ environmental concerns by working with the nonprofit Clean Gulf Associates to contain and clean up oil spills. In 1976, Halliburton established the Halliburton Energy Institute in Duncan, Oklahoma, to provide an industry forum for disseminating technical information.

In 1980, Halliburton Research Center opens in Duncan, Oklahoma. The company's billionth sack of cement for customers was pumped in 1983.

In 1989, Halliburton acquired logging and perforating specialist company Gearhart Industries and combined it with its subsidiary Welex to form Halliburton Logging Services.

Throughout the 1980s, Halliburton's subsidiaries continued their projects around the world, even in countries once considered enemies. Equipment was provided for the first multiwell platform offshore China, and an Otis Engineering team controlled a gigantic Tengiz field blowout in the Soviet Union.

1990s
Following the end of Operation Desert Storm in February 1991, the Pentagon, led by then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, paid Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root Services over $8.5 million to study the use of private military forces with American soldiers in combat zones. Halliburton crews also helped bring 725 burning oil wells under control in Kuwait.

Thomas H. Cruikshank, who served as chairman and CEO from 1989 until 1995, was replaced by Dick Cheney.

In the early 1990s Halliburton was found to be in violation of federal trade barriers in Iraq and Libya, having sold these countries dual-use oil drilling equipment and, through its former subsidiary, Halliburton Logging Services, sending six pulse neutron generators to Libya. After having pleaded guilty, the company was fined $1.2 million, with another $2.61 million in penalties.

During the Balkans conflict in the 1990s, Kellogg Brown-Root (KBR) supported U.S. peacekeeping forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Hungary with food, laundry, transportation and other lifecycle management services.

In 1998 Halliburton merged with Dresser Industries, which included Kellogg. Prescott Bush was a director of Dresser Industries, which is now part of Halliburton. Former United States president George H. W. Bush worked for Dresser Industries in several positions from 1948–1951, before he founded Zapata Corporation.

2000s


The Wall Street Journal reported in 2001 that a subsidiary of Halliburton Energy Services called Halliburton Products and Services Ltd. (HPS) opened an office in Tehran. The company, HPS, operated on the ninth floor of a new north Tehran tower block. Although HPS was incorporated in the Cayman Islands in 1975 and is "non-American", it shares both the logo and name of Halliburton Energy Services and, according to Dow Jones Newswires offers services from Halliburton units worldwide through its Tehran office. Such behavior, undertaken while Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, may have violated the Trading with the Enemy Act. A Halliburton spokesman, responding to inquiries from Dow Jones, said "This is not breaking any laws. This is a foreign subsidiary and no US person is involved in this.  No US person is facilitating any transaction.  We are not performing directly in that country." Later Dave Lesar would book his own flights to the Tehran office through the UK arm of KBR. No legal action has been taken against the company or its officials.

In April 2002, KBR was awarded a $7 million contract to construct steel holding cells at Camp X-Ray.

From 1995–2002, Halliburton Brown & Root Services Corp was awarded at least $2.5 billion but has spent considerably less to construct and run military bases, some in secret locations, as part of the Army's Logistics Civil Augmentation Program. This contract was a cost plus 13% contract and BRS employees were trained on how to pass GAO audits to ensure maximum profits were attained. It was also grounds for termination in the Balkans if any BRS employee spoke of Dick Cheney being CEO. BRS was awarded and re-awarded contracts termed "non-competitive" due to BRS being the only company capable to pull off the missions. DYNACORP actually won the competitively let 2nd contract but never received any work orders in the Balkans.

In November 2002, KBR was tasked to plan oil well firefighting in Iraq, and in February 2003 was issued a contract to conduct the work. Critics contend that it was a no-bid contract, awarded due to Dick Cheney's position as Vice President. Concern was also expressed that the contract could allow KBR to pump and distribute Iraqi oil. Others contend, however, that this was not strictly a no-bid contract, and was invoked under a contract that KBR won "in a competitive bid process." The contract, referred to as LOGCAP, is a contingency-based contract that is invoked at the convenience of the Army. Because the contract is essentially a retainer, specific orders are not competitively bid (as the overall contract was).

In May 2003, Halliburton revealed in SEC filings that its KBR subsidiary had paid a Nigerian official $2.4 million in bribes in order to receive favorable tax treatment. In October 2004, Halliburton opened a new 250000 sqft facility on 35 acre, replacing an older facility that opened in 1948, in Rock Springs, Wyoming. With over approximately 500 employees, Halliburton is one of the largest private employers in Sweetwater County.

On January 24, 2006 Halliburton's subsidiary KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown and Root) announced that it had been awarded a $385 million contingency contract by the Department of Homeland Security to build "temporary detention and processing facilities" or internment camps. According to Business Wire, this contract will be executed in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth District. Critics point to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp as a possible model. According to a press release posted on the Halliburton website, "The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs. The contingency support contract provides for planning and, if required, initiation of specific engineering, construction and logistics support tasks to establish, operate and maintain one or more expansion facilities."

In February, 2008, a hard disk and two computers containing classified information were stolen from Petrobras while in Halliburton's custody. Allegedly, the content inside the stolen material, was data on the recently discovered Tupi oil field. Initial police inquiries suggest that it could be a common container theft operation. The container was a ramshackle in complete disorder indicating that thieves were after "valuables and not only laptops", said an expert consulted by the daily newspaper Folha de S. Paulo.

In 2008 Halliburton agreed to outsource its mission-critical information technology infrastructure to a Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex data center operated by CyrusOne Networks LLC.

On May 14, 2010 U.S. president Barack Obama is quoted by CNN as saying "You had executives of BP and Transocean and Halliburton falling over each other to point the finger of blame at somebody else" when referring to the congressional hearings held during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. "The American people could not have been impressed with that display, and I certainly wasn't." According to Tim Probert, executive VP of Halliburton, “Halliburton, as a service provider to the well owner, is contractually bound to comply with the well owner's instructions”.

It was anticipated that Halliburton’s $2.5 billion "Restore Iraqi Oil" (RIO) contract would pay for itself as well as for reconstruction of the entire country. Plans called for more oil to be exported from Iraq's northern oil fields than actually occurred. Halliburton’s work on the pipeline crossing the Tigris river at Al Fatah has been called a failure. Critics claim that the oil fields are barely usable and access to international markets is severely limited. As an example, against the advice of its own experts, Halliburton attempted to dig a tunnel through a geological fault zone. The underground terrain was a jumble of boulders, voids, cobblestones and gravel and not appropriate for the kind of drilling Halliburton planned. "No driller in his right mind would have gone ahead," said Army geologist Robert Sanders when the military finally sent people to inspect the work.

Controversies
The company has become the object of several controversies involving the 2003 Iraq War and the company's ties to Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney retired from the company during the 2000 U.S. presidential election campaign with a severance package worth $36 million. As of 2004, he had received $398,548 in deferred compensation from Halliburton while Vice President. Cheney was chairman and CEO of Halliburton Company from 1995 to 2000 and has received stock options from Halliburton.

Bunnatine Greenhouse, a civil servant with 20 years of contracting experience, had complained to Army officials on numerous occasions that Halliburton had been unlawfully receiving special treatment for work in Iraq, Kuwait and the Balkans. Criminal investigations were opened by the U.S. Justice Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Pentagon's inspector general.

In one of Greenhouse's claims, she said that military auditors caught Halliburton overcharging the Pentagon for fuel deliveries into Iraq. She also complained that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's office took control of every aspect of Halliburton's $7 billion Iraqi oil/infrastructure contract. After her testimony, Greenhouse was demoted for poor performance. Greenhouse's attorney, Michael Kohn, stated in The New York Times that "she is being demoted because of her strict adherence to procurement requirements and the Army's preference to sidestep them when it suits their needs.

Halliburton is the only company mentioned by Osama bin Laden in an April 2004 tape in which he claims that "this is a war [in Afghanistan] that is benefiting major companies with billions of dollars."

On the 8th of September 2010, an internal report released by British Petroleum into the Deepwater Horizon Incident claimed that poor practices of Halliburton staff had contributed to the disaster.

Sale of KBR
On April 15, 2006, Halliburton filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission to sell up to 20 percent of its KBR stock on the NYSE under the ticker symbol "KBR", as part of an eventual plan for KBR to be a separate company from Halliburton.

In November 2006, Halliburton began selling its stake in KBR, its major subsidiary, and by February 2007 had completely sold off the subsidiary. In June 2007, several days after Stewart Bowen, the Special Inspector General, released a new report, the Army announced that KBR would share another $150 billion contract with two other contractors, Fluor and Dyncorp, over the next ten years.

In popular culture
In the episode "Hard Bargain" of the USA network show Burn Notice, Halliburton is referenced when the main character, Michael Westen, tells a clueless housesitter that he should get the company to help fix up the nice house he is staying at.

Environmental issues
In 2002, Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) reports were completed to measure the amount of chemicals emitted from Halliburton's Harris County, Texas facility. The TRI is a publicly available EPA database that contains information on toxic chemical releases and waste management activities reported annually by certain industries as well as federal facilities. The facility had 230 TRI air releases in 2001 and 245 in 2002.

On June 7, 2006 Halliburton's Farmington, New Mexico facility created a toxic cloud that forced people to evacuate from their homes.

Halliburton may also be implicated in the oil spills in the Timor Sea off Australia in August 2009 and in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010 for improper cementing. Halliburton staff were employed on the Transocean operated Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Mexican Gulf. Halliburton staff completed cementation of the final production well 20 hours prior to the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion, but had not yet set the final cement plug. Halliburton advised BP to install numerous devices to make sure the pipe was centered in the well before pumping cement, otherwise, the cement might develop small channels that gas could squeeze through. In an April 18 report to BP, Halliburton warned that if BP didn't use more centering devices, the well would likely have "a SEVERE gas flow problem." Still, BP decided to install fewer of the devices than Halliburton recommended—six instead of 21. An investigation is underway as to the cause of the Australia spill.

Baghdad incident
In accordance with the law of armed conflict and to maintain non-combatant status, Halliburton does not arm its truck drivers. Trucks are often the target of insurgent attacks. On September 20, 2005, a convoy of four Halliburton trucks was ambushed north of Baghdad. All four trucks were struck by improvised explosive devices and were disabled. Their US National Guard escort was thought to have abandoned the disabled vehicles, leaving the drivers defenseless. Three of the four truck drivers were killed by the insurgents while the surviving driver, Preston Wheeler, caught the event on video. Although the trucks had military camouflage paint, the drivers were civilian. The US military returned to the scene 45 minutes later. However, in a statement by senior military officials in Iraq, an investigation revealed that troops did not abandon the civilians and they were all exiting the "kill zone" during the ambush.

Subsidiaries
As of Halliburton's latest form 10-K filings with the SEC, Exhibit 21.1 lists the following as subsidiaries of Halliburton Co. :


 * Breswater Marine Contracting B.V. (Netherlands)
 * DII Industries, LLC (United States)
 * Easy Well Solutions AS (Norway)
 * Halliburton Affiliates, LLC (United States)
 * Halliburton AS (Norway)
 * Halliburton Canada Holdings, Inc. (United States)
 * Halliburton Company Germany GmbH (Germany)
 * Halliburton de Mexico, S. de R.L. de C.V. (Mexico)
 * Halliburton Energy Cayman Islands Limited (Cayman Islands)
 * Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. (United States)
 * Halliburton Group Canada Inc. (Canada)
 * Halliburton Group Holdings (1) Company (Canada)
 * Halliburton Group Holdings (2) Company (Canada)
 * Halliburton Holdings (No. 3) (United Kingdom)
 * Halliburton International, Inc. (United States)
 * Halliburton Latin America S.A. (Panama)
 * Halliburton Manufacturing and Services Limited (United Kingdom)
 * Halliburton Netherlands Operations Cooperatie (Netherlands)
 * Halliburton Norge Holding AS (Norway)
 * Halliburton Norway Holdings C.V. (Netherlands)
 * Halliburton Overseas Limited (Cayman Islands)
 * Hobbymarkt Delft BV (Netherlands)
 * Kellogg Energy Services, Inc. (United States)
 * Landmark Graphics Corporation (United States)
 * Oilfield Telecommunications, LLC. (United States)

Headquarters
Halliburton's headquarters (North Belt office) is located in Harris County, in northern Houston, Texas, near George Bush Intercontinental Airport.

Halliburton had its headquarters in Dallas, Texas from 1961 to 2003. The company moved its headquarters from the Southland Life Building in Dallas to 50648 sqft of space in Lincoln Plaza in Downtown Dallas in 1985. 20 employees worked in Halliburton's headquarters in Dallas.

Halliburton planned to move its headquarters to Houston in 2002. Halliburton, which signed its lease to occupy a portion of 5 Houston Center in Downtown Houston in 2002, moved its headquarters there by July 2003. Halliburton occupied 26000 sqft of space on the 24th floor in 5 Houston Center. In 2009 Halliburton announced that it planned to move its headquarters to the North Belt offices in Houston. In addition it planned to consolidate operations at its Westchase and North Belt offices. The move occurred in 2009. The 90 acre North Belt complex will house 2,200 employees. Halliburton planned to add a research and development facility with laboratories, a new cafeteria, a childcare center, two additional parking garages, and fitness and wellness centers for employees. The plans for the North Belt office had been delayed by one year, and Halliburton expects completion in 2013. The construction of the North Belt administration building is scheduled to begin in late 2010.

According to Marilyn Bayless, the president of the North Houston Greenspoint Chamber of Commerce, in 2003, Halliburton had planned to move operations out of the North Belt office because other area school districts offered the freeport tax exemptions while the Aldine Independent School District (AISD), where the North Belt office is located, did not. In order to attract businesses, in May 2003, AISD began offering the same tax exemption as other jurisdictions. Subsequently, Halliburton retained the North Belt office.

Corporate Giving
According to the company, Halliburton’s total corporate giving for 2009, including cash and in-kind donations, was more than $572 million. In addition, Halliburton employees volunteered more than 49,000 hours during the year.