ASHINGTON, April 10 — The Pentagon contract given without competition to a Halliburton subsidiary to fight oil well fires in Iraq is worth as much as $7 billion over two years, according to a letter from the Army Corps of Engineers that was released today.
The contract also allows Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary, to earn as much as 7 percent profit. That could amount to $490 million.
The corps released these new details in a letter to Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California and one of the two senior lawmakers who asked the General Accounting Office to investigate how the Bush administration is awarding contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq.
But the administration said that these contracts and all other contracts to rebuild Iraq were awarded without any comment from Mr. Cheney or anyone else in the White House.
"The White House has no role in selecting individual contractors," said Michael Anton, spokesman for the National Security Council.
Lt. Gen. Robert B. Flowers, the commander of the Corps of Engineers, wrote in his letter that Kellogg Brown & Root was chosen because it was the only contractor considered capable of developing what he called "complex, classified contingency plans" and then to carry them out "on extremely short notice."
"No other contractor could satisfy mission requirements in the time available," General Flowers wrote.
He also said that the Defense Department could not follow public procedures for awarding the contract, including a public notice, because the war plans and the need to fight oil fires in Iraq were then classified information. In the future, however, General Flowers promised "ample opportunity for competition" to restore Iraq's oil infrastructure.
