US paying Halliburton $2.64 gal to import gas to Iraq (WTF???)

[xray s]

New York Times News Service
Published December 10, 2003

The U.S. government is paying Halliburton Co. an average of $2.64 a gallon to import gasoline in Iraq, more than twice what others are paying to truck in Kuwaiti fuel, government papers show.

Halliburton, which has the exclusive contract to import fuel into Iraq, subcontracts the work to a Kuwaiti firm, government officials said. But Halliburton receives 26 cents a gallon to cover overhead costs and its fee, according to Army Corps of Engineers documents.

The papers show Halliburton is charging $2.64 for a gallon of fuel it imports from Kuwait and $1.24 per gallon for fuel from Turkey. The fuel is sold in Iraq for 5 cents to 15 cents a gallon.

The Iraqi state oil company and the Pentagon's Defense Energy Support Center import fuel from Kuwait for less than half of the cost per gallon charged by Halliburton, according to government records...

I am sure everything is on the square. No opportunity for fraud here. Just wise stewardship of the taxpayers money by our courageous Republican president.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0312100207dec10,1,90744.story?coll=chi-news-hed

[gWbush is Mabus]

1. they didn't want that ammendment to go after war profiteers

[alexwcovington]

2. The happy insanity of corporate corruption

Now this is TOTALLY indefensible.

[NewGuy]

3. I'm not sure your right here

The government, especially the military, have an interesting method of computing their costs. They often ignore both military pay and civilian pay as sunk costs. They do the same with transportation costs if they use existing transport assets. i.e. we already have these people and assets so they are free. In industry we do not compute that way as it is foolish. Industry uses all costs incurred in computing their bids.

Back during the Bosnia conflict I heard a general officer talking about how the Air Force had saved the Army several million dollars by providing the bed down facilities that Brown and Root were contracted to provide. Three months later the same general corrected his figures by pointing out that the figures he had used before did not include transport costs for the people, the equipment or the materials used in the bed down.

It turns out they had flown all equipment, etc. in on military aircraft and so assumed it was free to do so. An example he used was the plywood used for temporary facilities. Its cost when purchased in the US was a couple of bucks a sheet. By the time you have moved it from North Carolina to Bosnia via Mil Air it has cost about six times that based on the value of the assets transporting it. Similarly flying a buldozer from the east coast of the US to Bosnia increases its cost by about 75%.

[tom_paine]

6. Nonsense, this is straight up corruption and fraud!

This stuff isn't being moved from here in the Empire to over there. It is being moevd from right next door.

Plus...$2.65 cents?!?

You'd have to figure withe the chickens in charge of the henhouse that Corporate Fraud would go for the jugular, having been "freed" (freedom for corporations to steal is the most important freedom in Imperial Amerika, you know) from the democratic institutions that prevented the old USA from becoming mired in corruption like Marcos' Phillipines, Saddam's Iraq, or Brezhnev's Soviet Union.

Of course, now that corporations are free to loot as much as they wish with no questions asked, one wonders what will happen when the Bushevik followers are free to behave like Nazis and Soviets towards people they don't like?

My guess...like Halliburton ia now, they will do so with great gusto and reckless abandon.

[NewGuy]

9. We are reading this article completely diferently.

I interpret what it says to be that Halliburton makes $.26 per gallon for importing fuel from Kuwait and that DESC and the Iraqi fuel people can impoort it at half the cost or $.13 per gallon. My point was that DESC likely does not include their own employees or their own overhead in that per gallon cost. Normally, when the govt computes cost it computes only what they pay. They do not add on any overhead cost.

This is why you can hire a contractor to purchase things from the same source and claim a savings. Contractors work with less overhead.

[Bozita]

4. "no-bid contracts" or "free trade" ... Which is it?

Can't have it both ways.

[Armstead]

5. kick

[bobthedrummer]

7. Puts a tiger in your tank.

eom

[HereSince1628]

8. War's Hell. Baddabing, Baddaboom!

Since da Pentagon spends widout accountability you wasn't sposed to notice. Now yous guys is gonna sleep wid da fishes.