Couldn't happen to a nicer company.
Halliburton said that the Chevron tests were preliminary and what Chevron tested may have been different from the "unique blend of cement and additives" used on the Deepwater Horizon.
Basically the argument is centering around the cement that was going to be used to temporarily seal the Macondo well created a stable foam, which in the event it most certainly it did not as all the oil in the Gulf of Mexico now shows.
Halliburton argue that even though the tests they carried out showed in the most part the mixture was unsuitable that the final mixture used for which test reports appear to be lacking was in fact suitable.
Halliburton as we all know have an exemplary record of getting things right, just ask the Pentagon.
"The fact that BP and Halliburton knew this cement job could fail only solidifies their liability and responsibility for this disaster," Markey said. "This is like building a car when you know the brakes could fail, but you sell the cars anyway."
Now for those of you who do not know Halliburton also own KBR [Kellogg Brown & Root]
The Department of Defense paid former Halliburton subsidiary KBR more than $80 million in bonuses for contracts to install electrical wiring in Iraq. The award payments were for the very work that resulted in the electrocution deaths of US soldiers, according to Department of Defense documents revealed today in a Senate hearing
Apart from shoddy work there is the small matter of corruption:
In a decision that epitomizes the war profiteering and corruption that have accompanied the American operation in Iraq, US Army officials have decided to override the recommendations of the Pentagon’s own internal auditors and pay nearly all of a quarter-billion dollars in disputed billings submitted by a subsidiary of Halliburton, the huge oil services and construction firm headed by Dick Cheney until he became vice president.
Oh and they do play the same game elsewhere:
KBR admitted that, at crucial junctures before the award of the EPC contracts, KBR’s former CEO, Albert "Jack" Stanley, and others met with three successive former holders of a top-level office in the executive branch of the Nigerian government to ask the office holder to designate a representative with whom the joint venture should negotiate bribes to Nigerian government officials. Stanley and others negotiated bribe amounts with the office holders’ representatives and agreed to hire the two agents to pay the bribes. According to court documents, the joint venture paid approximately $132 million to the first agent, a consulting company incorporated in Gibraltar, and more than $50 million to the second agent, a global trading company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, during the course of the bribery scheme. KBR admitted that it had intended for these agents’ fees to be used, in part, for bribes to Nigerian government officials.
So now we are asked to believe that in fact the cement that was finally used [but no test reports are available] would meet the requirements when the final evidence indicates that it in fact did not.
Why do I have such a problem believing anything that Halliburton says when they have in place a culture of corruption?
sigh.
Oh and because it is the season:
You really want to vote for the party that would just accept this as standard business practice and go for 'drill baby drill'?