Halliburton Company is an American multinational corporation and the world's second largest oil service company and responsible for most of the world's largest fracking operations. It employs approximately 55,000 people through its hundreds of subsidiaries, affiliates, branches, brands, and divisions in more than 70 countries. The company, though incorporated in the United States, has dual headquarters located in Houston and in Dubai.
Halliburton's major business segment is the Energy Services Group (ESG). KBR, a public company and former Halliburton subsidiary, is a major construction company of refineries, oil fields, pipelines, and chemical plants. Halliburton announced on April 5, 2007, that it had sold the division and severed its corporate relationship with KBR, which had been its contracting, engineering and construction unit as a part of the company.
The company has been criticized for its involvement in numerous controversies, including its involvement with Dick Cheney – as U.S. Secretary of Defense, then CEO of the company, then Vice President of the United States – and the Iraq War, and the Deepwater Horizon, for which it agreed to settle outstanding legal claims against it by paying litigants $1.1 billion.
KBR, one of Halliburton's subsidiaries at the time, paid bribes to high-ranking Nigerian officials between 1994 and 2004. Under a deal reached with the U.S. Justice Department, Halliburton has agreed to pay $382 million to settle the bribery case.
In 2015, Halliburton was found guilty in court for illegal retaliation against a whistleblower who filed a report with the SEC over concerns that the company was illegally concealing billions of dollars.
The company has also been criticized for refusing to comply with EPA requests for transparency around chemicals it uses in hydraulic fracturing.
Jeff Miller was promoted to President of Halliburton on August 1, 2014, and CEO on June 1, 2017, replacing Dave Lesar.
Business overview
Locations
The company has dual headquarters located in Houston and in Dubai, but it remains incorporated in the United States.
Divisions
Energy services (the company's historical cornerstone), formation evaluation, digital and consulting services, production volume optimization, and fluid systems are the major business segments. These businesses continue to be profitable, and the company is one of the world's largest players in these service industries; it is second after Schlumberger, and is followed by Saipem, Weatherford International, and Baker Hughes.
With the acquisition of Dresser Industries in 1998, the Kellogg-Brown & Root division (in 2002 renamed to KBR) was formed by merging Halliburton's Brown & Root (acquired 1962) subsidiary and the M.W. Kellogg division of Dresser (which Dresser had merged with in 1988). KBR is a major international construction company that works in an industry that tends to have an element of volatility and is subject to significant fluctuations in revenue and profit. Asbestos-related litigation from Kellogg acquisition caused the company to book more than US$4.0 billion in losses from 2002 through 2004.
As a result of the asbestos-related costs and staggering losses on the Barracuda Caratinga FPSO construction project based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Halliburton lost approximately $900 million U.S. a year from 2002 through 2004. A final non-appealable settlement in the asbestos case was reached in January 2005 which allowed Halliburton subsidiary KBR to exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy and returned the company to quarterly profitability. While Halliburton's revenues have increased because of its contracts in the Middle East, the overall impact on its bottom line has been mixed.
At a meeting for investors and analysts in August 2004, a plan was outlined to divest the KBR division through a possible sale, spin-off or initial public offering. Analysts at Deutsche Bank valued KBR at up to $2.15 billion, while others believed it could be worth closer to $3 billion by 2005. KBR became a separately listed company on April 5, 2007.
History
Early history (as HOWCO) The company was started in 1919 by Erle P. Halliburton as the New Method Oil Well Cementing Company.