$2.4 billion no-bid pipeline? What pipeline?

[Roland99]

Rebuilding of Iraqi Pipeline as Disaster Waiting to Happen
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/25/world/middleeast/25pipeline.html?ex=1303617600&en=d01c31229dfae8f2&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

When Robert Sanders was sent by the Army to inspect the construction work an American company was doing on the banks of the Tigris River, 130 miles north of Baghdad, he expected to see workers drilling holes beneath the riverbed to restore a crucial set of large oil pipelines, which had been bombed during the invasion of Iraq.What he found instead that day in July 2004 looked like some gargantuan heart-bypass operation gone nightmarishly bad. A crew had bulldozed a 300-foot-long trench along a giant drill bit in their desperate attempt to yank it loose from the riverbed. A supervisor later told him that the project's crews knew that drilling the holes was not possible, but that they had been instructed by the company in charge of the project to continue anyway.

A few weeks later, after the project had burned up all of the $75.7 million allocated to it, the work came to a halt.

The project, called the Fatah pipeline crossing, had been a critical element of a $2.4 billion no-bid reconstruction contract that a Halliburton subsidiary had won from the Army in 2003. The spot where about 15 pipelines crossed the Tigris had been the main link between Iraq's rich northern oil fields and the export terminals and refineries that could generate much-needed gasoline, heating fuel and revenue for Iraqis.

...

But as of last week, an official at Iraq's State-owned North Oil Company said, oil was still not flowing at Al Fatah.

I sure hope Halliburton got their deserved performance bonus!

[izzie]

1. I read that and it sure is a mess.

It is hard to see how all these bright men can do such a bad job.

[bullimiami]

2. because they are all getting paid. no bid, no incentive to even do the job

contracts. its all about transferring hundreds of billions to big republican donor corps.

[aquart]

3. This severely hurts our national interest.

Prosecute the bastards for treason.