Halliburton: Managing The Second Largest Oil Company

Halliburton's vision is to be the preferred upstream service company for the development of global oil and gas assets. (www.Halliburton.com, 2008) Currently, Halliburton operates in seventy countries working within two major segments: drilling and excavation and completion and production. Since 1919, the company has been a leader in energy services and engineering and construction industries. Over the years, Halliburton has continued to expand due to properly executed strategic, tactical, and operational planning. In 1962 Halliburton purchased Brown and Root, and engineering company, and by 1998 Dresser Industries, a chief component in the oil industry, was acquired. Based on the situational analysis of the oil industrial market Halliburton obtained these two companies and became a petrochemical processing, engineering, and construction giant.

Like their success with the oil market, the standing plans that Halliburton set into motion propelled the company into new markets such as their involvement with the U.S. space program and military provision. In the early sixties, the company was hired by the NASA as the architectural engineer for the Johnson Space center. Brown and Root is also notorious for their carbon dioxide removal system they developed that helped rescue the Apollo crew from a fatal disaster. Beginning with World War II, it was again the Brown and Root's division of Halliburton that built the Corpus Christi Naval Air Station. The company aided in the damage to oil wells and buildings after Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait as well. Because of Halliburton's ability to implement their plans accurately, they were awarded major contracts with the U.S. Army for worldwide logistics and support planning. It was the first contract of its kind and size the military ever awarded to a civilian group or civilian run company.

The market analysis and need for oil consumption, Halliburton's competition with similar companies, and presently the war in Iraq are all external factors that have bearing on the organization's planning tactics. "Unconventional Hydrocarbons, Deepwater and Complex Wells, Precise Well Placement and Digital Solutions: These are some of the important market focus areas for the energy industry today. And as market drivers change, Halliburton continues to evolve our solutions Ð'- with innovation and expertise Ð'- to address these new focus areas." (www.Halliburton.com, 2008) With their advances in technology in energy provisions, Halliburton has produced hundreds of patens for products and such technologies as well as achieved many industry firsts. Halliburton's top ten technologies include: oil mud reservoir imaging, LOGIQ logging platform, cement assurance tools, CobraMax H Service, high-performance INNOVERT and INTEGRADE clay-free oil-based fluid, GasPerm 1000 service, PropStop WC service, optimized reservoir decisions, targeted automated steering solutions, azimuthal deep resistivity sensor and stratasteer 3D geosteering service. "With our E&C expertise, we built critical roads and bridges to connect communities, and dams to provide power and create recreational areas. In these ways, Halliburton helped shape life in the 20th century." (www.Halliburton.com, 2008).

Even with all of these influential advancements, Halliburton is probably known more for its recent citations in the media for an assortment of legal issues. "With various ongoing investigations, Halliburton's sale of KBR and the move to UAE are tantamount to fleeing the scene of a crime," said Jim Donahue, co-director of Halliburton Watch. (www.HalliburtonWatch.com, 2008). This statement was made after Halliburton announced in March of 2007, that they were moving their corporate headquarters to Dubai, UAE. During the past several years, Halliburton has been in the spotlight under investigation for bribery, bid rigging, defrauding the military, illegally profiting in Iran, serving contaminated food and water, and rape accusations. These serious allegations have all had a detrimental impact on the way Halliburton will conduct business in the future. In my opinion, Halliburton CEO's have resorted to their "Plan B" or contingency plan of relocating their corporate headquarters. By moving its corporate headquarters from the United States to Dubai, UAE, Halliburton is able to evade federal