Bechtel Corporation

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Bechtel Corporation

logo
legal form Private
founding 1898
Seat San Francisco
management Riley P. Bechtel ( CEO )
Number of employees 44,000
sales 31.4 billion US dollars
Branch Construction industry
Website bechtel.com

The Bechtel Corporation (Bechtel Group) is the largest construction and plant engineering company in the USA. Bechtel, with its headquarters in San Francisco , ranks seventh among the private companies in the USA . In 2009, Bechtel employed 44,000 people in 900 projects with sales of $ 31.4 billion.

The company participated in the construction of the Hoover Dam in the 1930s. It has also been on other major construction projects, including the Canal Tunnel , many pipeline , refinery and nuclear power plant projects, the Bay Area Rapid Transit in San Francisco, the Jubail Industrial City in Saudi Arabia , the Hong Kong International Airport , the Grasberg Project ( Grasberg -Mine ) of Freeport, the Boston Central Artery / tunnel ( Big Dig ), the waste treatment plant of Hanford Site of the US Department of energy, the renovation of the London Underground and from 2003 when by the United States Agency for International Development funded (USAID) Involved in rebuilding Iraq's civil infrastructure .

The Bechtel family has owned the company since it was founded in the 1920s. Bechtel's size, political influence, and penchant for secrecy made it a consistent destination for journalists and politicians since the 1930s. Bechtel has close relationships with US government officials including (ex-) presidents Ronald Reagan , George Bush and George W. Bush . The company also has excellent relationships with other governments, particularly the Saudi royal family.

Recently, the company came under fire for alleged mismanagement of the Big Dig project, its financial ties to the Bin Laden family, and the way in which it obtained the Iraq reconstruction treaties after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Politicians in the US and Europe raised allegations of corruption in the relationship between the Bush administration and Bechtel.

For many years, Bechtel has been advocating the privatization of utility facilities, expressways , airports and other traditionally publicly run facilities and companies. The company owns and operates its own power plants , oil refineries, water treatment systems and airports in various countries including the United States, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Bechtel's involvement in oil , electricity and water overseas became more and more the target of globalization critics and environmental movements.

Company history

Beginning

Bechtel always worked as a family business. Its founder, Warren A. Bechtel, began working in the burgeoning US railroad industry in 1898 after his cattle ranch in Oklahoma went bankrupt. Over the next 20 years he built up a sizable construction company that specialized in railroad and expressway construction.

In 1919 the company built the Klamath Highway in California . In 1921, Warren Bechtel and his partners won the tender for the water tunnel for the Caribou Hydroelectric Facility in California. In 1925, his sons Warren Jr., Stephen and Ken joined his company, which then renamed the WA Bechtel Company. In 1926, the new company won its first major contract, Bowman Lake Dam in California.

The 1930s

In 1928, the US Congress passed the Boulder Canyon Project Act , which approved the construction of the Colorado River dam . The plan was initially called "Boulder Dam", but after some disputes it was named "the Hoover Dam" ( honoring President Herbert Hoover ). The construction was the largest construction project at the time.

For the next two years, various companies competed to build the dam . In order to participate in the tender , the WA Bechtel Company and its five competitors joined a newly established " Six Companies Corporation " (six-company company). This consortium was set up only for the purpose of building Hoover Dam and their combined strength guaranteed the most attractive offer. On March 11, 1931, the US Department of the Interior selected the Six Companies to build the dam. Construction of the Hoover Dam began in late 1931 and was completed in 1936, two years ahead of schedule.

Warren A. Bechtel died suddenly while traveling abroad in 1933, when the Hoover Dam project was still unfinished. His son took over as President of the company and remained in this position until his son Stephen Jr. succeeded him. 1947.

After the construction of the Hoover Dam, Bechtel's reputation grew rapidly. Even so, Stephen Bechtel wanted to achieve more with his company than just a construction company. He decided that WA Bechtel Company would have to take on more complex engineering projects and oil contracts.

In 1936, Bechtel built the 13 km long San Francisco- Oakland Bay Bridge . In 1937, Bechtel merged with John McCone's construction company to form the Bechtel-McCone Company.

Second World War

On July 19, 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Two-Ocean Navy Act , which provided for the construction of two large navies, one for the Atlantic and one for the Pacific . The US Maritime Commission chose Bechtel to build their new shipyard for the Pacific Fleet . Bechtel built the Bechtel shipyard in Sausalito , California and produced hundreds of cargo ships and oil tankers for the US Navy . John McCone's California Shipbuilding Company also won large and profitable shipbuilding contracts in early 1941, which lasted until the end of World War II .

While the so-called " arsenal of democracy " was being set up in the US, American war strategists were worried about what would happen if the Axis powers got the world's oil reserves under control. The Italian invasion of Egypt in September 1940 caused just as much worry as the coup in April 1941 in Iraq, where, with German support, Raschid Ali al-Gailani, Prime Minister of the "Government of National Defense" of the " Golden Square " came to power on the British side, however, was eliminated within a few weeks.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the issue of security of supply with petroleum became even more important. The war strategists were concerned that the Japanese might invade Alaska and threaten the northern oil fields, which promised to become a significant part of America's oil supply. In April 1942, the US Army approved the construction of the Alaska Highway (ALCAN) to facilitate the movement of troops and supplies to Alaska. Shortly thereafter, the construction of the CANOL pipeline was approved.

The contract for the CANOL pipeline went to the Bechtel-Price-Callahan consortium, consisting of the WA Bechtel Co., the HC Price Co. and the WE Callahan Construction Co. When the Japanese were in June 1942 in the Aleutian Islands off the coast of Alaska landed, construction became urgent. Due to the poor planning of the army and the mismanagement of the contract partners, the CANOL project completely flopped. The pipeline devoured more oil than it produced and cost taxpayers an enormous amount of money. In addition, it became clear over time that the Japanese did not have the resources to invade Alaska. The CANOL pipeline was abandoned after only 11 months.

In the American prewar period in late 1940 and early 1941, various scandals and allegations came to light that a number of public defense contractors were involved in widespread corruption. At the urging of Senator Harry S. Truman , the US Senate established a committee of inquiry into the National Defense Program in 1941, known as the Truman Committee. This committee of inquiry, chaired by Truman, spent two years investigating waste and corruption in the defense industry .

In 1943, the Truman Committee issued a damning verdict on the $ 143 million CANOL project, according to which it was more harmful to the war effort than any acts of sabotage by the enemy. The ruling highlighted the Bechtel-Price-Callahan consortium for their role in the cost overrun and mismanagement that plagued the project. The committee of inquiry later criticized the shipbuilding industry for its wartime activities, including fraud, bribery and other forms of corruption.

Post war era

After the war, the WA Bechtel Company bought John McCone's stake in Bechtel-McCone and renamed the Bechtel Corporation . John McCone presided over the United States Atomic Energy Commission and later the CIA .

In 1947, Bechtel expanded its oil pipeline activities with the construction of the Trans-Arab Pipeline in Saudi Arabia. With a length of 1,600 km, it was the longest pipeline in the world at the time. In addition to the pipeline itself, Bechtel built large parts of the modern infrastructure of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait , including airports, seaports and oil refineries.

In 1946, the US Congress passed the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 to research nuclear energy . This law introduced the Atomic Energy Commission, in which Bechtel's former partner John McCone took the chair. In accordance with President Dwight D. Eisenhower's famous "Atoms for Peace" speech in 1953, commercial research on nuclear energy was approved.

In 1956, Bechtel received the right to commission the world's second commercial nuclear reactor, Dresden-1, in Illinois . Its construction began in 1957 and the facility was completed in 1960. In 1959, the Parsons-Brinckerhoff-Tudor-Bechtel consortium won the tender for San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit System. The system, completed in 1972, served as a model for other urban mass transportation systems around the world.

The 1960s and 1970s

During the 1960s and 1970s, Bechtel expanded its power plant activities. In 1963, Bechtel began building the San Onofre nuclear power plant in California.

At that time, the company diversified into other industries. In the late 1960s, Bechtel began its development, financing, and investment branch under the name Bechtel Enterprises Holdings , Inc. This company fueled Bechtel's experience, capital, and government ties to compete with other engineering companies around the world to step. In 1972, Bechtel won a $ 13 billion tender for the Baie James hydropower project in northwest Québec . The project was completed in 1985 and drew criticism from the growing environmental movement in the US and Canada .

In 1976, Bechtel was commissioned to build the industrial city of Al-Jubail in Saudi Arabia. Until 1992, the 930 km² city of Jubail was one of the most modern cities in Saudi Arabia with a population of over 70,000. After the successful completion of the project in the late 1980s, Bechtel's contract was extended to 2007 by the Saudi government.

1980s and after

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Privatized water supply in Bolivia

Bechtel's recent history is fraught with controversy: in 1988, after Saddam Hussein received international condemnation for the use of poison gas against thousands of Kurdish compatriots, Bechtel signed treaties with Iraq to set up dual-use chemical plants in Baghdad .

In 2000, Bechtel signed a contract with Hugo Banzer Suárez , the former dictator and then President of Bolivia , which privatized the water supply of the third largest city in Bolivia, Cochabamba . The contract was officially signed by a Bechtel subsidiary Aguas del Tunari , which was established specifically for this purpose. A short time later, the company tripled water charges in the city; this led to protests and unrest among those who could no longer afford clean water. Many people have had to take their children out of school and stop visiting the doctor because of abnormally high water costs. Bechtel even demanded payments for rainwater and enforced a law that forbade digging new wells. In the face of the demonstrations that followed, martial law was declared and the Bolivian police ultimately killed 6 people and injured over 170 protesters. Amid Bolivia's national economic collapse and growing national dissatisfaction with the state of the economy, the Bolivian government was forced to withdraw from this water contract.

In 2001, Bechtel sued the Bolivian government for $ 25 million in lost profits . The legal dispute, which was not yet over, attracted attention from anti-capitalist groups and opponents of globalization.

Boston Big Dig

In early 2003, the Boston Globe published an investigation into Bechtel's role in the massive cost overrun and accounting irregularities in Boston's Big Dig project, which amount to over $ 1 billion. The Globe and Associated Press asked the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority to publish the acceptance reports from their files on Bechtel's Big Dig . Bechtel threatened to issue an injunction to prevent the documents from being published, but the supreme court decision denied Bechtel's request on April 11, 2003, which paved the way for the documents to be published.

In late 2004, leaks occurred in the Ted Williams Tunnel , which Bechtel had built as part of the Big Dig. Smaller leaks resulted from joints in the ceiling of the tunnel, larger ones resulted from the structural weakness of the tunnel walls, which are below the water table. Many leaks are caused by Bechtel failing to remove ballast and other debris before the concrete was poured.

Links to politics ( revolving door effect )

Bechtel has long had close ties with the American government and the Republican Party in particular . From 1974 to 1982 George P. Shultz , former US Treasury Secretary and later Secretary of State , was President and Director of Bechtel. As foreign minister he sent Donald Rumsfeld to Iraq as a special envoy to discuss with Saddam Hussein an order for Bechtel to build an oil pipeline to Jordan . Shultz also served as chair of the Advisory Committee for the Liberation of Iraq , an influential think tank that advocated the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. The former Defense Minister Caspar Weinberger was the legal advisor at Bechtel. Former Assistant Secretary of Energy W. Kenneth Davis was Vice President at Bechtel. Riley P. Bechtel , chairman of the Bechtel Corporation, was a member of President George W. Bush's Export Council. General John J. Sheehan became Senior Vice President of Bechtel after retiring from the military.

In 1988, Bechtel [from whom?] Received an order to build a chemical plant in Iraq, but construction was suspended because of Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. On April 17, 2003, USAID (see above) awarded Bechtel a US $ 680 million contract. This put Bechtel in the limelight, along with other American companies such as Halliburton, and resulted in careful international scrutiny because the companies received contracts to rebuild Iraq without a public tender. Like many other American companies, Bechtel donated large sums of money to US politicians (over $ 1 million in campaign contributions between 1999 and 2002). The company had close ties to the Bush administration and critics both in the US and its allies, such as Great Britain , who questioned the practice of awarding Iraq contracts. Bechtel has received over $ 1 billion in reconstruction contracts in Iraq.

A report that Saddam Hussein submitted to the UN shortly before the invasion of Iraq in 2003 said that Bechtel had participated in Iraq's nuclear weapons program. (Although the US tried to black out the names of all US companies involved, an uncensored copy made it to the press.)

On May 5, 2003, the New Yorker published an article, according to which the bin Laden family invested 10 million US dollars in the Fremont Group , a private equity fund of the Bechtel family (the fund was formerly called Bechtel Investments).

Past and current directors

  • Riley P. Bechtel is the CEO at Bechtel. With a net worth of $ 2.7 billion, he ranks 336th on the Forbes 500s list of the richest people in the world and 103rd place among the richest Americans (as of April 2007). In February 2003, President George W. Bush appointed him to the Export Council, which advises the President on international trade issues.
  • George P. Shultz, former US Secretary of State during the Ronald Reagan presidency and former President of Bechtel, is currently a director at Bechtel. He is also active on the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.
  • Caspar Weinberger served as Secretary of Defense during Ronald Reagan's presidency. Before this office he was Vice President, Director and Legal Counsel of the Bechtel Group.
  • General John J. Sheehan of the US Marine Corps was formerly NATO's Commander in Chief Atlantic and formerly Special Advisor to the US Department of Defense for Asia. Sheehan is currently Bechtel's general manager for the oil and chemicals business in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Southwest Asia and is also a Bechtel partner. He is also a member of the US Defense Policy Committee.
  • Ross J. Connelly is the former CEO of Bechtel Energy Resources Corporation . He currently works for George W. Bush's Overseas Private Investment Corporation .
  • W. Kenneth Davis is a former Bechtel Senior Vice President and former US Deputy Secretary of Energy.

Subsidiaries and investments

  • Aguas del Tunari
  • Airport Group International Holdings, LLC
  • Alterra Partners
  • Alliance Bechtel-Linde
  • Alterra Partners ( UK )
  • Arabian Bechtel Corporation
  • Bantrel, Inc. ( Calgary , Canada )
  • BCN Data Systems (UK)
  • Bechtel Babcock and Wilcox Idaho , LLC
  • Bechtel Bettis, Inc.
  • Bechtel Canada, Inc.
  • Bechtel Capital Partners LLC
  • Bechtel China, Inc.
  • Bechtel CITIC Engineering, Inc. ( People's Republic of China )
  • Bechtel COSAPI ( Peru )
  • Bechtel Constructors Corporation
  • Bechtel-ENKA, joint venture with Enka Insaat ve Sanayi (Turkey)
  • Bechtel Enterprises Holdings, Inc. (BEn)
  • Bechtel Financing Services, LLC
  • Power Generation Engineering and Services Co. (PGESCo) ( Egypt )
  • Bechtel Great Britain Ltd. (Great Britain)
  • Bechtel Hydrocarbon Technology Solutions
  • Bechtel Infrastructure Corporation (BINFRA)
  • Bechtel Jacobs Company LLC
  • Bechtel Hanford Inc.
  • Bechtel Metodo Telecomunicacoes Ltda. (BMT) (Brazil)
  • Bechtel National Inc.
  • Bechtel Nevada Corporation
  • Bechtel Northern Corporation
  • Bechtel Overseas Corporation
  • Bechtel / Parsons Brinkerhoff joint venture
  • Bechtel Petroleum, Inc. (USA)
  • Bechtel Plant Machinery, Inc.
  • Bechtel Power Corp. (UNITED STATES)
  • Bechtel SAIC LLC
  • Bechtel Savannah River, Inc.
  • Bechtel-Sigdo Koppers, Joint Venture ( Chile )
  • Bechtel-Technip joint venture
  • Becon Construction Company, Inc.
  • BPR-Bechtel
  • Bechtel Telecommunications
  • Cliffwood-Blue Moon Joint Venture, Inc.
  • Colstrip Energy LP
  • Dabhol Power Company, joint venture with General Electric and Enron ( India )
  • Dual Drilling Company
  • Eastern Bechtel Co. Ltd.
  • EnergyWorks LLC
  • The Fremont Group
  • Incepta Group PLC
  • InterGen, joint venture with Shell
  • International Water
  • IPSI LLC
  • Lectrix
  • Lima Airport Partners
  • Los Alamos National Security
  • NetCon Thailand, joint venture with Lucent
  • Nexant
  • NorthGas Ltd., joint venture with Gazprom in Russia
  • PSG International, partnership with General Electric
  • Saudi Arabia Bechtel Company (Saudi Arabia)
  • Sequoia Ventures, Inc.
  • Spruce Limited Partnership
  • United Infrastructure Company (Chicago) (before Bechtel bought his partner's shares in 1998)
  • Technology Ventures Group
  • USGen Power Services, LP

Other Bechtel projects

  • Chemical weapons disposal facility in Anniston, Alabama
  • Reconstruction of various sections of the Croatian highway between Zagreb and Split in 1998 (a 990 million US dollar project funded by the US Export-Import Bank)
  • Big Dig
  • Dabhol Power Project, joint venture between Enron and General Electric in Maharashtra, India (marks the largest foreign investment in the history of India)
  • Trans-Caspian Pipeline (another joint venture with Enron and General Electric)

literature

  • Laton McCartney: Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story: The Most Secret Corporation and How It Engineered the World. Simon and Schuster, New York 1988, ISBN 0-671-47415-4 . (Paperback: Ballantine Books, 1989, ISBN 0-345-36044-3 )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bechtel joins crew for asteroid mining ft.com, accessed April 23, 2013