Halliburton charged Army $112 million for fuel; $694 million for delivery

[ProSense]

New dispute on U.S. firm's billing in Iraq

By James Glanz / The New York TimesPublished: November 7, 2006

Halliburton charged Iraq as much as $25,575 a month for each of as many as 1,800 fuel trucks that were to deliver fuel to Iraq after the 2003 invasion, but the trucks often spent days or weeks sitting idle on the border, according to an audit commissioned by a UN agency.

The audit raised new questions about a $2.4 billion contract that the U.S. Army awarded without competitive bidding to Kellogg Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary that later changed its name to KBR. Dick Cheney was Halliburton's chief executive until he left for his successful campaign for vice president.

The auditors hired by the agency, the International Advisory and Monitoring Board of the Development Fund for Iraq, designated by the United Nations to oversee Iraq's vast oil revenue, agreed that $200 million in disputed charges were justified. But the agency said the audit's detailed findings on how Halliburton came up with $1.4 billion in charges from May 2003 to March 2004 raised new questions on hundreds of millions of dollars more.

The audit found, for example, that in an $871 million work order for delivering fuel to Iraq, just $112 million was actually spent on fuel. But $694 million was paid to a Kuwaiti subcontractor, "primarily for fuel transportation," the audit says.

more...