Halliburton

Halliburton is one of the world's largest providers of products and services to the energy industry. With more than 55,000 employees in approximately 70 countries, the company serves the upstream oil and gas industry throughout the lifecycle of the reservoir — from locating hydrocarbons and managing geological data, to drilling and formation evaluation, well construction and completion, and optimizing production through the life of the field.

Halliburton's major business segment is the Energy Services Group (ESG). The company's former subsidiary, KBR, is a major construction company of refineries, oil fields, pipelines, and chemical plants.

1919: The company was started in 1919 by Erle P. Halliburton as the New Method Oil Well Cementing Company.

1920: New Method became Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Co. (HOWCO), and it soon established headquarters in Duncan, Oklahoma.

1921: Halliburton's "method and means of excluding water from oil wells" was assigned a patent from the United States Patent Office.

1922: The Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Company (HOWCO) was prospering from the Mexia, Texas oil boom, having cemented its 500th well in late summer.

1924: The Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Company became a corporation in Delaware. The company was founded that year and is headquartered in Houston, TX.“ The company was incorporated in Delaware, with 56 people on its payroll.

1926: Halliburton took its first steps to become a worldwide company by selling five cementing units to an English company in Burma, which started its Eastern Hemisphere operations. Its first foreign venture began with the sale of equipment to Burma and India.

1929: By the time the company reached its ten-year milestone, research and development had improved processes and equipment to the point where a mixture made up of 2,500 sacks of cement could be injected into a well in 48 minutes.

1932: It opened four new branches, enabling it to send 75 cementing and well-testing crews to sites in seven states.

1938: The company deployed a barge-mounted cementing rig in the Gulf of Mexico, thus establishing itself in offshore services, which eventually became a major segment of the petroleum industry. Halliburton cemented its first offshore well using a truck on a barge off the Louisiana coast.

1946: The company expanded into Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and the Middle East and began performing services for the Arabian-American Oil Company, the forerunner of Saudi Aramco.

1947: Halliburton's first marine cementing vessel went into service.

1948: Halliburton shares were offered on the New York Stock Exchange for the first time.

1949: The company acquired an exclusive license to practice hydraulic fracturing, a newly invented technique for releasing hitherto inaccessible oil and gas deposits from underground rock formations.

1951: Halliburton made its first appearance in Europe as Halliburton Italiana SpA., a wholly-owned subsidiary in Italy. The company made its first appearance in Europe as Halliburton Italiana SpA., a wholly-owned subsidiary in Italy. HOWCO had service centres operating in Canada, Venezuela, Peru, Colombia, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia.

1952: Halliburton revenues topped $100 million for the first time.

1955: All of this was reflected in the annual sales figures, which reached $152.4 million by the end of the year and produced net profits of $16.3 million.

1956: Costing $3 million alone, it rewarded the company’s efforts with a new composition for cementing deep wells and a method for making the fracturing sand radioactive, among other innovations.

1957: Erie Halliburton died, after 28 years as company president and 10 as chairman. Such over-expansion came to a head when a slump followed, bringing with it a corresponding decrease in the demand for exploration equipment. 

1959: Otis Engineering, an oil field service and equipment company specializing in manufacturing pressure control equipment for oil and gas-producing wells, was acquired.

1961: The company changed its name to the Halliburton Company.

1962: Acquired Brown & Root. 

1963: Halliburton was the first company in Oklahoma to receive the Presidential "E" for the Export flag in recognition of notable contributions to foreign trade.

1964: Halliburton opened a 500,000 sq ft (46,000 m) manufacturing centre in Duncan, Oklahoma.

1965: Halliburton's acquisition program resulted in 16 units that were autonomous but closely coordinated into three main areas. The company began to experiment with new technologies to help their services – for example, beginning of the year a pilot operation of a computer network system – the first such installation in the oilfield services industry.

1966: Workers broke ground for a new wing at the Research Center in Duncan that tripled the available space for the Chemical Research and Design Department.

1968: An automated mixing system for drilling mud was developed by Halliburton, primarily for use offshore.

1969: Halliburton began construction of a base camp at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Slope.

1971: Dubai city and capital of the emirate of Dubai, one of the wealthiest of the seven emirates that constitute the federation of the United Arab Emirates, which was created this year following independence from Great Britain.

1973: The exception was Ebasco Services, acquired along with Vernon Graphics from Boise Cascade. Imports now cost a total of $45 million, as against $7.7 billion.

1975: It responded to environmental concerns by working with the nonprofit Clean Gulf Associates to contain and clean up oil spills. Although HPS was incorporated in the Cayman Islands and is "non-American", it shares both the logo and name of Halliburton Energy Services and, according to Dow Jones Newswires, offers services from Halliburton units worldwide through its Tehran office.

1976: Brown & Root and Raymond International, a competitor, teamed up on a $22 million bridge construction project in Louisiana. Ebasco was, therefore, sold. Halliburton established the Halliburton Energy Institute in Duncan, Oklahoma, to provide an industry forum for disseminating technical information.

1979: Beginning in June, price controls were to be phased out over 28 months, although they were replaced with a windfall-profits excise tax to keep prices high, a method of encouraging oil conservation.

1980: The company's total revenues reached $8.3 billion. Halliburton Research Center opened in Duncan, Oklahoma. A similar arrangement the same year paired Brown & Root and Norwegian Petroleum Consultants. It was the company's old faithful, however, oil well cementing, that formed the basis for post-slump recovery; Halliburton was servicing 60 percent of the market.

1982: An economic recession plus sharply lower oil prices began to affect the oil exploration industry and its suppliers.

1983: The company's billionth sack of cement for customers was pumped.

1984: Halliburton provided all well-completion equipment for the first offshore multiwell platform in China.

1985: A lawsuit alleging that Brown & Root had mismanaged a south Texas nuclear power plant construction project cost a settlement of $750 million, producing a $340 million loss for the year.

1986: Halliburton became the first American company to perform oilfield services in mainland China.

1989: Its total revenues, showing assets of $4.2 billion, were $5.66 billion. Halliburton acquired logging and perforating specialist company Gearhart Industries and combined it with its subsidiary Welex to form Halliburton Logging Services.

1991: Following the end of Operation Desert Storm in February, the Pentagon, led by then-defence secretary Dick Cheney, paid Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root Services over $8.5 million to study the use of private military forces with American soldiers in combat zones. The company opened a branch office in Moscow.

1992: A special charge of $264.6 million was recorded for the first stages of the restructuring, which included the elimination of 3,000 jobs, including 26 vice-president slots.

1993: The only major acquisition of this period came in March when Smith International, Inc.’s Directional Drilling Systems and Services business was added for about $247 million in stock. In July Halliburton merged its ten semi-autonomous energy services units, including Halliburton Services and Otis Engineering, into a single group called Halliburton Energy Services, in a significant act of streamlining. Also created, was Brown & Root Energy Services, which combined all of Brown & Root’s upstream oil and gas engineering and construction services.

1994: Cheney inherited a much leaner and more profitable company thanks to the Cruikshank-led restructuring (net income was $178 million), and quickly launched another round of acquisitions, perhaps the most ambitious in company history.

1995: Dick Cheney, who had served as United States Secretary of Defense under President George Bush, was named chairman, CEO, and president of Halliburton, taking over the helm from the retiring Cruikshank.

1996: In October Halliburton acquired Landmark Graphics Corp. for about $550 million in stock.

1998: The company faced challenges in the new millennium, however, due to lingering asbestos claims and an SEC investigation related to changes in accounting practices that occurred that year--when United States Vice-President Dick Cheney was company CEO. The firm began booking estimated payments it planned to receive in the future. Halliburton merged with Dresser Industries, which included Kellogg.

2000: Cheney resigned in 2000 to join their running mate George W. Bush on the Republican ticket in the upcoming presidential election.

2001: A Baltimore jury awarded a group of plaintiffs $30 million, sending company stock to its lowest point in nine years. The Wall Street Journal reported that a subsidiary of Halliburton Energy Services called Halliburton Products and Services Ltd. (HPS) opened an office in Tehran.

2002: In April, KBR was awarded a $7 million contract to construct steel holding cells at Camp X-Ray. “SEC Launches Halliburton Probe,” Oil Daily, December 23. The company agreed to pay approximately $5 billion in cash and stock to settle all claims. The SEC began an investigation into Halliburton’s accounting practices.

2003: Antosh, Nelson, “Houston-Based Halliburton Posts $602 Million Loss in Fourth Quarter,” Houston Chronicle, February 21.

2006: On January 24, Halliburton's subsidiary KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown and Root) announced that it had been awarded a $385 million contingency contract by the Department of Homeland Security to build "temporary detention and processing facilities" or internment camps.

2008: In February, a hard disk and two computers containing classified information were stolen from Petrobras while in Halliburton's custody. Halliburton opens a new technology centre in Singapore as well as manufacturing centres in Malaysia, Brazil and Mexico.

2009: For the first time, the number of horizontal wells drilled exceeded the number of vertical wells drilled as operators increase focus on unconventional basins.

2010: Landmark Software and Services releases DecisionSpace® Desktop technology.

2011: Halliburton deploys the first series of Q10™ pumps.

2013: Halliburton opened Completion Technology and Manufacturing Center in Singapore.

2014: On November 17, Halliburton and Baker Hughes jointly announced a definitive agreement under which Halliburton will, subject to the conditions set forth in the agreement, acquire Baker Hughes in a stock and cash transaction valued at $34.6 billion. A press release made available on the former's website, as at December 11, detailed the restructuring in the integration to follow. Halliburton opened Argentina’s first sand storage and loading facility to support the country’s transition from shale exploration to development.

2015: Halliburton introduced the next-gen acoustic evaluation service – Xaminer Sonic Service.

2016: The merger had a deadline of the end of April after which, if a decision had not been made, both companies could walk away from the deal if they chose.

2017:The Company added to its Drilling and Evaluation technology offering through the acquisition of Ingrain.

2018: Halliburton releases Illusion® Spire - the first fluid-efficient dissolvable frac plug.

2019: Halliburton celebrated 100 years of service.

2020: The Company introduced SmartFleet™, the first intelligent automated fracturing system. 

“To achieve superior growth and returns for our shareholders by delivering technology and services that improve efficiency, increase recovery, and maximize production for our customers.”

“Continuous improvement is built into all facets of our business, from R&D to team building, delivering sustainable solutions, and meeting the needs of our customers, shareholders, and global communities.”