The US Army said on Tuesday it had granted Halliburton a waiver to bring fuel into Iraq via a no-bid deal with a Kuwaiti supplier despite a draft Pentagon audit that found evidence of overcharging for fuel.
US Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Ross Adkins said the waiver was not tied to the Pentagon's audit of Halliburton, the oil services company once run by Vice President Dick Cheney, but was done to ensure much-needed fuel reached the Iraqis.
US Army Corps of Engineers head Lieutenant General Robert Flowers signed a waiver on December 19 ruling that Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root did not have to provide "cost and pricing data" related to a sole-source contract with a Kuwaiti company to deliver hundreds of million of gallons of fuel.
"This is not linked to the draft audit and should be looked at as a separate issue," Adkins said when asked to comment on a Wall Street Journal story that said the waiver meant Halliburton had effectively been cleared of allegations of overpricing raised by Pentagon auditors.
"What we are doing is a step to continue to have fuel flowing into the country," he added. "This means they can have a sole source situation because there is no other source in the region for the fuel."
Bringing in fuel to Iraq has been a difficult, often embarrassing mission for Halliburton, which has faced a barrage of allegations from Democrats in particular, who say the company got the work because of its political connections.
The military said last week its own fuel agency, the Defence Energy Support Center, would take over the job of bringing in fuel as soon as it has put new contracts in place.
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