Norm Ornstein: Dubai Ports World Is Considering Selling U.S. Operations To Halliburton

ThinkProgress
Mar. 10, 2006

Today Dubai Ports World announced it would “transfer fully the U.S. operations…to a United States entity.” This evening on the PBS News Hour, AEI scholar Norm Ornstein said that DP World was considering selling its U.S. operations to Halliburton:

If this is done now through the backdoor, where D.P. [Dubai Ports World] has any role at all, Congress is going to go ballistic, and it’s going to be a disaster, I think, for the administration.

They have got a dilemma now, because there simply aren’t American companies that have the know-how and the breadth to do this. Interestingly, and perhaps ironically, what I had heard earlier in the day, as they were looking at those that have the — the kind of resources, Halliburton was a name that came up.

Very interesting.

UPDATE: Halliburton denies the rumors.

From today’s New York Daily News:

DP World did not say. And scratch Halliburton off the list.

Melissa Norcross, a spokeswoman for the controversial U.S. company once headed by Vice President Cheney, called suggestions circulating on the Hill that they might take over “false and baseless.”