This one amounts to some $75 million for a pipeline they never built. Some snips from the NY Times:

A few weeks later, after the project had burned up all of the $75.7 million allocated to it, the work came to a halt.

The project, called the Fatah pipeline crossing, had been a critical element of a $2.4 billion no-bid reconstruction contract that a Halliburton subsidiary had won from the Army in 2003.

More:

The Fatah project went ahead despite warnings from experts that it could not succeed because the underground terrain was shattered and unstable.

It continued chewing up astonishing amounts of cash when the predicted problems bogged the work down, with a contract that allowed crews to charge as much as $100,000 a day as they waited on standby.

The company in charge engaged in what some American officials saw as a self-serving attempt to limit communications with the government until all the money was gone.

Shocking. Someone call the Vice President!

The company received a slap on the wrist when it got only about 4 percent of its potential bonus fees on the job order that contained the contract; there was no other financial penalty.

Halliburton got a bonus?

With the failed effort at Al Fatah, the inspector general estimated lost money from crude oil exports at as much as $5 million a day. The United States was forced to issue a new $66 million job order that includes another attempt to run pipelines across the Tigris — this time using a different technique.

KBR maintains that the report did not contain enough detailed information to raise questions about the project.

But Mr. Sanders said drill supervisors at the site, the kind of workers he liked to call "tool pushers," had indicated otherwise.

Hoping to start a conversation with them during his visit, Mr. Sanders said the geology around the area looked as if it could be tough on a drilling operation. The men did not hesitate. "They agreed that it was just the wrong place for horizontal drilling," Mr. Sanders said. "They didn't see any probability of getting one of the big holes done."

But he said they had been told to keep drilling — pushing their tools, anyway. Of course, by giving Mr. Sanders any information, they had probably violated their contract with KBR.

Mr. Sanders, outraged by the poor quality of the work and what he described as the indifference of the Army Corps to it, contacted the inspector general. "Everything I could see out of it was being swept under the rug," he said.

But it was already too late. One morning at about the time of his visits, American officials in the Oil Ministry in Baghdad finally obtained a status report from KBR.

All the money had been spent.

Don't worry, America. Through taxes or interest rates, they'll get you to foot the bill.

via The Raw Story

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