Army OKs Halliburton Waiver for Oil Deal
Tue January 6, 2004 11:04 AM ET
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U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Ross Adkins said the waiver was not tied to the Pentagon's audit of Halliburton, the oil services company once run by Vice President Dick Cheney, but was done to ensure much-needed fuel reached the Iraqis. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers head Lt. Gen. Robert Flowers signed a waiver on Dec. 19 ruling that Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root did not have to provide "cost and pricing data" related to a sole-source contract with a Kuwaiti company to deliver hundreds of million of gallons of fuel.
"This is not linked to the draft audit and should be looked at as a separate issue," Adkins said when asked to comment on a Wall Street Journal story that said the waiver meant Halliburton had effectively been cleared of allegations of overpricing raised by Pentagon auditors. "What we are doing is a step to continue to have fuel flowing into the country," he added. "This means they can have a sole source situation because there is no other source in the region for the fuel."
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So, in spite of the attempt by the WSJ to take the heat off of Halliburton, and the mindless reporting by other news outlets, when you dig deep enough, you find the truth.
http://www.reuters.com/financeNewsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=PTLWAYKV02T44CRBAEOCFEY?type=businessNews&storyID=4080981You may have to paste entire link to read article