WASHINGTON, May 30: Halliburton Co has received more US government contracts in Iraq than earlier reported, including an “obscure but lucrative” deal with 425 million dollars, a US lawmaker says.

Representative Henry Waxman said in a letter dated Thursday that he recently learned of the deal for Halliburton’s Kellogg Brown and Root subsidiary to provide logistical support for US armed forces dating back to 2001.

The contracts awarded to Halliburton, the oil firm once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, have been criticized by Waxman and others because of the potential for favored treatment and because many appeared to be awarded without bids.

“When the contracts are combined, the total amount that Halliburton has receieved to date for work related to Iraq is now nerly 500 million dollars,” Waxman’s letter to US Army Secretary Les Brownlee states.

In addition, Waxman said, the open-ended nature of some oil services contracts make the potential even greater.

One contract with the US Army Corps of Engineers has “a two year duration and a ceiling of seven billion dolalrs,” he said, while the second contract “has no ceiling at all,” making the amount Halliburton could receive “virtually limitless.”

“It is simply remarkable that a single company could earn so much money from the war in Iraq,” Waxman said.

The deals “allowed Halliburton to profit from virtually every phase of the conflict with Iraq, including the military buildup prior to the war, the conduct of the war and the restoration of Iraq after the war,” the Democratic lawmaker said. —AFP