Boots & Coots nets Iraq oil fires contract
HOUSTON, March 25 (Reuters) - Boots & Coots International Well Control Inc. <WEL.A> said on Tuesday it has been hired to fight oil well fires in Iraq and supply well control services.
The subcontract comes from Halliburton Inc.'s <HAL.N> engineering and construction subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root, also known as KBR. That unit said Monday it was awarded a U.S. government contract to assess and extinguish oil well fires in Iraq.
KBR, which developed a contingency plan to battle oil fires at the request of the U.S. Department of Defense, also hired Superior Energy Service Inc.'s <SPN.N> Wild Well Control Inc. to perform similar services, it said on Monday.
Boots & Coots, which performed similar work on 240 burning wells in Kuwait after the last Persian Gulf War in 1991, did not say how much the contract would be worth.
Houston-based Boots & Coots, which has been flirting with the possibility of bankruptcy, already had people assessing the well fires currently burning in southern Iraq. But they were pulled back after the sites were found to be not quite as secure as previously thought.
The contract has helped pull the firm's stock higher. In trading on the American Stock Exchange on Tuesday, Boots & Coots was up 11 cents, or 10 percent at $1.20 a share. Superior Energy's shares also rose 22 cents, or 2.5 percent, to $9.02 on the New York Stock Exchange.
Halliburton, formerly headed by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, has a long history of involvement in military logistical support for the U.S. government. The company is the second-largest oilfield services firm in the world.
Its stock rose 78 cents, or 3.9 percent, to $20.88 on the NYSE.
03/25/03 13:06 ET |
