Halliburton to relocate world headquarters to United Arab Emirates

Seoul News.Net
Monday 12th March, 2007

Halliburton has announced it is relocating its headquarters to Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.

The announcement was made at a regional energy conference in the Kingdom of Bahrain on Sunday. Halliburton Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Dave Lesar will move to Dubai to head the company's efforts in growing the company's business in the Eastern Hemisphere.

The company will continue to maintain a corporate office in Houston.

Halliburton, the company formally headed by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, was an exclusive service provider for a range of services to the United States Military. It came under scrutiny for the manner in which it was awarded contracts, mostly without tenders being called. The company also came under fire for over-charging the military for a part of their services.

Halliburton was initially appointed to provide a report on potential outsourcing for the military back in 1991. It subsequently recommended a range of services be outsourced. It then entered into a contract with the military to become its exclusive contractor. The commissioning of the initial consultancy, and the negotiation of the exclusive contract, was carried out under the then-Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney. Cheney finished up as defense secretary in January 1993 and in 1995, was appointed CEO of Halliburton. He was later elevated to Chairman, both positions he held prior to becoming Vice President.

Most military contracts were negotiated and awarded to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. Shortly after taking over as CEO of Halliburton, Cheney sacked the then-CEO of Kellogg Brown and Root and appointed Lesar to the position. Lesar took over as CEO, President and Chairman of Halliburton when Cheney stepped down in July 2000. The subsidiary's name was later changed to KBR, Inc., Halliburton is presently disposing of the subsidiary, partly by exchanging KBR shares for Halliburton stock from existing stockholders.

Halliburton says the opening of a headquarters in Dubai is the next step in a strategic plan announced in 2006 to focus on expanding its customer relations with national oil companies while concentrating more of the company's investments and resources in growing its business in the Eastern Hemisphere.

Based in Dubai, Lesar will work closely with Halliburton Eastern Hemisphere Senior Vice President Ahmed Lotfy to develop the company's activities in the Middle East, Africa, the Asia Pacific and Europe/Eurasia regions.

In 2006, more than 38 percent of Halliburton's US$13 billion oil field services revenue was generated from the Eastern Hemisphere, an area encompassing four regions with more than 16,000 employees, more than 80 percent of which are localized.

Founded in 1919, Halliburton is one of the world's largest providers of products and services to the energy industry. It has been active in the Eastern Hemisphere energy services market since 1926.

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