Halliburton

DALLAS -- Halliburton Co., the No. 1 oil field-services company, said yesterday that it will cut 2,750 more jobs and take a fourth-quarter charge of $24 million, or 5 cents a share, on slumping demand for oil exploration and production services.Halliburton fell $2.56, to $30.38, in trading of about 8.15 million shares, more than twice its three-month daily average.Dallas-based Halliburton also said that its fourth-quarter profit would be 19 cents to 21 cents before the charge, less than the 36-cent average estimate of analysts polled by First Call Corp.

WASHINGTON - Pentagon auditors have found that Halliburton Co. cannot properly document more than $1.8 billion worth of work done under its contracts in Iraq and Kuwait, U.S. Army officials said yesterday. The latest setback for the Houston-based oil services company came in an audit by the Defense Contract Auditing Agency, which also found that the company's system for generating cost estimates used in negotiations with the government was "inadequate." The agency recommended that government contracting officials demand fixes within 45 days and seek more detailed information during negotiations with Halliburton, which has contracts worth as much as $18.2 billion in Iraq to feed and house troops and restore the country's oil infrastructure.

WASHINGTON - President Bush made clear yesterday that he believed a subsidiary of the politically connected Halliburton Co. overcharged the Pentagon millions of dollars for supplying fuel to Iraq and, if it did, would have to repay the government. "If there is an overcharge like we think there is, we expect that money to be repaid," Bush said sternly. The president spoke to reporters after a ceremony in the Roosevelt Room to announce his choice of Alphonso Jackson to be the new secretary of housing and urban development, replacing Mel Martinez, who resigned to explore a run for a Florida seat in the Senate.

HOUSTON -- Baker Hughes Inc., an oil field-services company, agreed to buy Western Atlas Inc. for $6.2 billion in stock and assumed debt, a bid to acquire Western's oil-exploration technology and pre-empt a potential offer from rival Halliburton Co.Based on Friday's closing prices, Baker Hughes is offering $98.70 a share in its stock for each Western Atlas share, or $5.5 billion. The offer, a 21 percent premium to Western's closing price Friday, was approved by Western's board.The buyer would assume about $700 million in debt.

THE ARMY FESSED up yesterday and admitted that Halliburton Co. stands to make a lot more money out of the mess in Iraq than it had been letting on. Halliburton had gotten a no-bid contract that supposedly was limited to extinguishing oil fires, but then Saddam Hussein's men inconveniently neglected to set many wells ablaze. No worry - there were a few other paragraphs buried in that no-bid contract, paragraphs that talk about Halliburton's "operation of facilities" and - our favorite - "distribution of products."

In his opening salvo as the Republican vice presidential nominee, Dick Cheney chided the Clinton-Gore team for "squandering" its time in power. No one could say the same of Cheney in recent years. The former defense secretary traded a position with a Washington think tank five years ago for a corporate office in Dallas and capitalized on his international and government connections to enrich the worldwide oil services company he led - and himself. As chief executive officer and chairman of the board of Halliburton Co., Cheney received $10.7 million in salary, cash bonuses and other compensation, according to company documents.

AUSTIN, Texas - The Securities and Exchange Commission is now investigating Halliburton - the company formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney - for accounting irregularities. What took so long? When you consider all the time and ink spent on Whitewater, the neglect of the Cheney-Halliburton story is unfathomable. The proximate cause of the SEC investigation is an "aggressive accounting practice" at Halliburton approved by the accounting firm Arthur Andersen - a little matter of counting revenue that had not yet been received, $100 million worth.

NATIONALLY Diebold Inc.Shares of the company, whose electronic-voting machines were criticized as vulnerable to hacking and breakdowns, rose $1.72, or 3.5 percent, to $50.39 yesterday, after computerized ballots showed few signs of trouble in the presidential election. Halliburton Co. Shares of the world's largest oilfield-services company, formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, jumped $1.54, or 4.3 percent, to $37.08.

EVERETT, Wash. - George W. Bush's campaign defended yesterday the $20 million retirement package vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney got from the energy services company he quit to run for office, saying there was nothing illegal or compromising about the transaction. "Of course, the [company's] rules allow this or he wouldn't have done it," Bush spokeswoman Karen Hughes said during a campaign stop here. She dismissed criticism that the payout means Cheney and Bush are in debt to the oil industry.

Halliburton officials say shifting the oil service giant's center of gravity from Texas to the Persian Gulf is just a "strategic" move to drum up more oil business. Chief Executive David Lesar even lanced the announcement that he was moving himself and his CEO headquarters to the United Arab Emirates city of Dubai into the middle of a weekend energy conference in Bahrain. The implication: It is no big deal, especially since Halliburton promises not to reincorporate overseas, which would have huge tax consequences, or to uproot its 4,000-employee Houston headquarters.