Bechtel

For persons named Bechtel, see Bechtel (surname).

Bechtel Corporation

File:Bechtel logo.png
Company type	Privately held company
Industry	Heavy construction Engineering Project Management
Founded	1898
Founder	Warren A. Bechtel
Headquarters	Blue Shield of California Building San Francisco, California, U.S.
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Riley P. Bechtel (CEO)
Products	Construction contracting
Revenue	US$37.9 billion (2012)
Owner	Bechtel family and various internally elected employees
Number of employees	52,700 (2010)
Website	www.bechtel.com

Bechtel Corporation (Bechtel Group) is the largest construction and engineering company in the United States, ranking as the 5th-largest privately owned company in the United States. Its headquarters are in the Financial District of San Francisco. As of 2012, Bechtel had $37.9 billion in revenue and employed 53,000 workers on projects in nearly 50 countries.

Bechtel participated in the building of Hoover Dam in the 1930s. It has also had involvement in a number of other high profile construction engineering projects: numerous power projects such as refineries and nuclear power plants; transportation projects including the Channel Tunnel, the BART system, King Fahd International Airport in Dammam (the largest Airport in the world by land area), Hong Kong International Airport and the Big Dig; and other projects such as the Kingdom Centre and Tower in Saudi Arabia, Jubail Industrial City, the rebuilding of the civil infrastructure of Iraq funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the hauling and installing of more than 35,000 trailers and mobile homes for Hurricane Katrina victims in Mississippi.

The Bechtel family has owned Bechtel since incorporating the company in 1945. Bechtel's size, its political clout, and its penchant for privacy have made it a constant subject of scrutiny for journalists and politicians since the 1930s. Bechtel owns and operates power plants, oil refineries, water systems, and airports in several countries including the United States, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.

History

Early 1900s

Bechtel has always functioned as a family-owned company. Its founder, Warren A. Bechtel, started as an employee of the burgeoning United States railroad industry in 1898 after his Oklahoma cattle ranch failed. Over the next 20 years, he built up a sizable contracting business that specialized in railroad and highway building. One of Bechtel's earliest major contracts was grading the site of the Oroville, CA depot for the Western Pacific Railroad, then under construction.

In 1919, Warren Bechtel and his partners (including his brother Arthur) built the Klamath Highway in California, and in 1921 Warren Bechtel partners won a contract to build the water tunnels for the Caribou Hydroelectric Facility in that state. In 1925, Warren A. Bechtel's sons Warren Jr., Stephen, and Ken joined him and incorporated as W.A. Bechtel Company. In 1926, the new company won its first major contract, the Bowman Lake dam in California.

1930s

In 1928, the U.S. Congress passed the Boulder Canyon Project Act, which mandated the construction of a hydroelectric dam on the Colorado River. The plan used the name "Boulder Dam", but after some controversy the structure gained the name of "Hoover Dam" (in honor of President Herbert Hoover). The construction involved the largest civil engineering project ever undertaken at the time.

Over the next two years several companies competed for dam-building contracts. To compete for the contract, the W.A. Bechtel Company joined with five competitors to form the Six Companies Corporation. This partnership formed for the sole purpose of the Hoover Dam project, and their combined strength virtually guaranteed that they would submit the most competitive bid. On March 11, 1931, the United States Department of the Interior selected the Six Companies to build the dam. Construction of the Hoover Dam began in late 1931 and finished in 1936, two years ahead of schedule.

Warren A. Bechtel died suddenly while traveling abroad in 1933, in the midst of the Hoover Dam project. His son Warren A. Bechtel, Jr., took over as president of the company and served in that position until succeeded by his brother Stephen.

After the building of Hoover Dam, Bechtel's reputation soared. However, Stephen Bechtel wanted the company to become more than just a construction firm. He pushed the W.A. Bechtel Company to undertake more complex engineering projects and oil contracts.

From 1933 to 1936, Bechtel helped build the 4.5 mile (7 km) long San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge. In 1937, Bechtel joined forces with John McCone's engineering company to form an engineering/construction firm called the Bechtel-McCone Company.

World War II

On July 19, 1940, President Roosevelt signed the Two-Ocean Naval Expansion Act, which authorized the construction of two huge fleets in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters. The U.S. Maritime Commission selected Bechtel to build a new shipyard for the Pacific fleet. Bechtel constructed the Marinship Bechtel Shipyards in Sausalito, California and produced hundreds of cargo ships and oil tankers for the Navy. W. A. Bechtel Co. was given sponsorship and executive direction of California Shipbuilding Company, which was one of the emergency shipyards formed to build Liberty ships in World War II. The company built hundreds of Liberty ships, and later, Victory ships, on Terminal Island until the end of the war in 1945, when it ceased operations.

While the United States built its "Arsenal of Democracy", American war planners increasingly worried about what would happen if the Axis gained control of the world's oil reserves. The Italian invasion of Egypt in September 1940 caused deep concern, as did the April 1941 coup in Iraq which brought the pro-German Golden Square faction to power.

Matters came to a head after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. War planners became concerned that the Japanese might invade Alaska and threaten the northern oil fields, which had started to become an important part of the U.S. oil supply. In April 1942, the United States Army authorized the creation of the ALCAN (Alaskan-Canadian Highway) to facilitate the movement of troops and supplies to Alaska. Soon afterwards the authorities authorized the CANOL oil pipeline.

The CANOL pipeline contract went to Bechtel-Price-Callahan, a partnership formed for the purpose by the W.A. Bechtel Co., the H.C. Price Co., and the W.E. Callahan Construction Co. In June 1942, the Japanese invaded the Aleutian Islands off the coast of Alaska, and the construction began in earnest. However, due to poor planning by the Army and mismanagement by the contractors, the CANOL project failed totally. The pipeline consumed more oil than it produced and cost taxpayers an enormous amount of money. Furthermore, as time went on, it became clear that the Japanese did not have the resources to invade Alaska. The CANOL pipeline was abandoned after a mere 11 months in operation.

During the pre-war period in late 1940 and early 1941, several scandals and allegations had surfaced involving wartime profiteering and widespread corruption at a number of defense contractors. In 1941, the U.S. Senate created the Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program at the urging of Senator Harry Truman. This committee, chaired by Truman, spent two years investigating waste and corruption in the defense industry.

In 1943, the "Truman Committee" released a scathing judgment on the $143 million CANOL project, calling it more destructive to the war effort than any act of sabotage by an enemy. The judgment singled out Bechtel-Price-Callahan for criticism for its role in the cost overruns and mismanagement that plagued the project.

Post-war era: late 1940s through 1950s

After the war, the W.A. Bechtel Company bought out John McCone's share in Bechtel-McCone and incorporated as Bechtel Corporation. John McCone went on to head the Atomic Energy Commission and later the Central Intelligence Agency (see below).

In 1947, Bechtel expanded its oil pipeline activities with its construction of the Trans-Arabian Pipeline in Saudi Arabia. At over 1,000 miles (1,600 km), this comprised the longest pipeline in the world at the time. In addition to the pipeline itself, Bechtel built large parts of the modern infrastructures of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, including airports, sea ports, and oil refineries.

In 1946, the U.S. Congress authorized government research into nuclear power with the Atomic Energy Act of 1946. This act created the Atomic Energy Commission, later headed by Bechtel's former partner John McCone. Following President Eisenhower's famous Atoms for Peace speech in 1953, commercial research into nuclear power was authorized.

In 1956, Bechtel won the right to build the world's second commercial nuclear power reactor, the Dresden-1 in Illinois. Construction began in 1957 and the plant came fully online in 1960, four years after the first commercial nuclear power reactor, Calder Hall in Sellafield, England.

In 1959, a Bechtel partnership called Parsons Brinckerhoff-Tudor-Bechtel gained the contract for San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system. The system, completed in 1972, served as a model for other urban transit systems around the world.

1960s and 1970s

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Bechtel expanded its energy engineering activities. In 1963, Bechtel began construction of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in California. However the company was embarrassed in 1977 when it installed a 420-ton nuclear-reactor vessel backwards at the power plant in San Onofre.

At this time the Corporation also diversified into other areas. In the late 1960s, Bechtel launched its development, finance, and investment arm, named Bechtel Enterprises Holdings, Inc. This firm leveraged Bechtel's experience, its capital, and its government ties to help other companies compete for engineering contracts throughout the world.

In 1972, Bechtel won a $13 billion contract for the James Bay hydroelectric project in northwest Quebec. The project was completed in 1985 and drew criticism from the growing environmental movements in the United States and Canada.

In 1976, Bechtel was awarded a contract to build Jubail Industrial City in Saudi Arabia. By 1992, the 360 square mile (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 by the government of Saudi Arabia through 2007.

Also of note in the 1970s, Bechtel was selected to provide Construction Management services, equipment procurement and management, and quality control services on the Trans Alaska Pipeline, an 800-mile long, 48-inch diameter pipeline project which was the largest privately funded project in North America at a total cost of $8.3 billion.

1980s

The 1980s were not kind to Bechtel. Employee headcount plunged from 44,000 in 1982 to 16,000 in 1995; one of the 1995 layoffs ultimately resulted in a landmark 2000 employment law decision of the Supreme Court of California, which noted that it was Bechtel who had presented evidence of its massive layoffs to the trial court.

In 1981, Bechtel constructed the Ok Tedi Mine, the largest mine in Papua New Guinea at the time. An engineering feat, the mine was constructed in one of the most remote and inaccessible regions in the world. Controversy would surround the major shareholder of the mining company, Broken Hill Proprietary (BHP), which is now known as BHP Billiton, when it allowed mine waste to be dumped directly in the Ok Tedi River after a tailings dam built by Bechtel was destroyed in a landslide. The Ok Tedi Environmental Disaster resulted from the riverine dumping of pollution.

In 1981, Bechtel bought controlling interest in Wall Street investment bank Dillon, Read & Co., and George Shultz joined Dillon Read's board representing Bechtel.

Bechtel's recent history has been fraught with controversy. In 1988, just after Saddam Hussein had earned international condemnation for using poisonous gas against thousands of Kurds, Bechtel signed contracts with Iraq to build a chemical plant. Bechtel never completed the project due to the onset of the first Gulf War in 1990.

In 1989, Bechtel repaired the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge after a 30 ft (9 m) section collapsed as a result of the Loma Prieta Earthquake.

1990s

According to the Wall Street Journal, Bechtel established a strong relationship with the rebel leader Laurent Kabila during the First Congo War of 1996–97 in central Africa, compiling "the most complete mineralogical and geographical data of the former Zaire ever assembled, information worth a fortune to any prospective mining or oil firm" and commissioning and paying for "U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration satellite studies of the country and for infrared maps of its mineral potential". According to government officials, some of the satellite data provided to Kabila by Bechtel was "militarily useful information".

In the late 1990s Bechtel was awarded the contract from Saudi Arabia's Civil Aviation Authority to build Dammam's King Fahd International Airport, the largest airport in the world in terms of land area (780 km²), thus making it larger than the nearby country of Bahrain, that Bechtel completed later than schedule and at a cost that was over budget while bad transport roads led many locals to fly via the nearby Bahrain International Airport.

2000 to present

Bolivia

In September 1999, Bechtel signed a contract with Hugo Banzer, the elected president and former dictator of Bolivia, to privatize the water supply in Bolivia's 3rd-largest city, Cochabamba. The contract was officially awarded to a company named Aguas del Tunari, a consortium in which Bechtel held a 27.5 percent interest. Shortly thereafter, claims surfaced that water rates in that city went up an average of about 50 percent and that even collection of rainwater was being made illegal as a result of the privatization contract. Both of these actions resulted in the Cochabamba protests of 2000. Martial law was declared, and Bolivian police killed at least 6 people and injured over 170 protesters. Amidst Bolivia's nationwide economic collapse and growing national unrest over the state of the economy, the Bolivian government withdrew the water contract.

In 2001, Bechtel filed suit against the Bolivian government, citing damages of more for $25 million. Bechtel argues that its contract was only to administer the water system, which suffered from terrible internal corruption and poor service, and that the local government raised water prices. The continuing legal battle attracted attention from anti-globalization and anti-capitalist groups. This topic is explored in the 2003 documentary film The Corporation, in the 2010 Spanish film Even the rain by Icíar Bollaín and on Bechtel's website. In January 2006, Bechtel and the other international partners settled the lawsuit against the Bolivian government for a reported two bolivianos, after intense protests that followed a ruling on jurisdiction favorable to Bechtel by the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes.

Saudi Arabia

In 2002, Bechtel finished work on the Kingdom Centre in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom Centre includes a shopping centre, a Four Seasons Hotel, state-of-the-art apartments, and most importantly the Kingdom Tower, a 302-meter tower, the tallest in Saudi Arabia and the 25th tallest building in the world. The total cost of the project was 1.717 billion Saudi Arabian Riyals and is owned by Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.

London

In January 2003, as part of the 30-year London Underground PFI, Bechtel acquired a one-third interest in Tube Lines.

Bechtel announced in May 2010 that it entered into an agreement to sell its one-third interest in Tube Lines to Transport for London (“TfL”) for £103 million.

Boston

In early 2003, the Boston Globe launched an investigation into Bechtel's role in massive cost overruns and accounting irregularities in Boston's Big Dig project totaling over $1 billion. Bechtel rebutted the allegations on its website. The Globe, along with the Associated Press, filed papers requesting that Massachusetts Turnpike Authority make public the results of all Bechtel's performance audits related to the Big Dig. Bechtel sought a preliminary injunction to block the release of the documents, but the superior court judge in the case denied Bechtel's request on April 11, 2003, opening the way for public release of the documents.

Bechtel has long had close ties to the American government. From 1974 to 1982 George Shultz, former United States Secretary of Treasury and future Secretary of State, was president and director. The late former U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger was general counsel for Bechtel in the late 1970s. Former deputy Secretary of Energy W. Kenneth Davis was Bechtel's vice-president. Riley Bechtel, the company's chair, was on President George W. Bush's Export Council. Jack Sheehan, a former senior vice-president of Bechtel, was a member of the U.S. Defense Policy Board. The Clinton Administration also appointed senior Bechtel managers to senior positions.

Like most large American companies, Bechtel and its employees have contributed large amounts of money to United States politicians (over a million dollars in campaign contributions between 1999 and 2002).

Iraq

Following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, George W. Bush awarded the first Iraq reconstruction contract to Bechtel through USAID, on April 20, 2003. This contract was worth an estimated $680 million. It is alleged that some of the construction projects managed by Bechtel were either poorly implemented, failing within months of their installation, or designed in such a way that Iraqi engineers did not have the knowledge or components to fix Bechtel's proprietary technology.

On May 5, 2003, The New Yorker ran an article revealing that the bin Laden family had passively invested several million dollars in The Fremont Group, a private equity fund owned by the Bechtel family.

Oak Ridge

In 2004 BWXT, a partnership of BWX Technologies and Bechtel National are fined $82,500 for a February 2003 accident at Oak Ridge, Tennessee's Y-12 facility after an accident caused a small explosion, a fire, and contaminated three employees.

Boston

In late 2004, a significant leak sprouted in the Big Dig's Tip O'Neill I-93 Tunnel, due to a contractor's failure to remove gravel or other debris before pouring concrete. Bechtel acknowledged failing to catch and correct the error. The Boston Globe also made a major issue of many leaks that sprang from gaps in the roof of the tunnel; these were later sealed by the tunnel contractors as part of the construction process.

Romania

In 2004, a contract estimated at 2.2 billion Euros was awarded to Bechtel in Romania for building the 413 km long A3 freeway. The contract came under criticism from the European Union because it was awarded through negotiation, not competitive bid. In 2005, the new Romanian government held up the project to renegotiate the contract but construction is now underway. In August 2011, after 6 years, Transilvanian Highway was still under construction, with only 54 km of road finished and 1.25 billion Euro paid to Bechtel USA. The Romanian Government has renegotiated the contract, allowing Bechtel to complete only two segments of the freeway, in total 118 km. In 2013 the Romanian Government cancelled the contract.

In January 2011, Bechtel announced its intention to bid for the contract for building two new reactors at the Cernavoda nuclear plant.

Harrison County, Mississippi

In 2005, Bechtel was awarded a no-bid contract by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to install temporary housing for the Hurricane Katrina disaster relief effort. The lack of competitive bidding for the contracts was criticized, as was the high cost of the contracts and the failure to support local, minority-owned businesses.

Boston

On July 10, 2006 a three ton section of concrete suspended ceiling crashed in the east bound lanes of the Massachusetts Turnpike I-90, in Boston. This tunnel ceiling collapse was in the Big Dig which Bechtel along with Parsons Brinckerhoff were responsible for building. This collapse claimed the life of Melena Del Valle, a 38 year old native of Costa Rica. Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reily immediately designated the accident scene a crime scene. He has left open the possibility of negligent homicide charges being levied against Big Dig contractors and managers.

U.S. Department of Energy

Effective October 1, 2007, the U.S. Department of Energy awarded Bechtel partnership LLNS LLC the contract to operate Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory: Bechtel has a presence, through various partnerships, in the bulk of the U.S. nuclear weapons facilities, including Los Alamos National Laboratory (design and pit production), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (design), Savannah River Site (nuclear materials), Hanford Site (nuclear materials), Pantex Plant (assembly/disassembly), Y-12 National Security Complex (nuclear materials), and the Nevada Test Site (subcritical testing).

U.S. Navy

Bechtel is under contract for the new A1B reactor, a nuclear reactor being designed for use by the United States Navy to provide electricity generation and propulsion for the Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers.

Executives

• Riley P. Bechtel is the CEO of Bechtel. With a net worth of $3.2 billion, he is the 50th wealthiest person in the United States and the 127th richest in the world. In February 2003, he was appointed by President George W. Bush to the Export Council, which advises the president on international trade issues. He served for one year.
• David O'Reilly serves on the Bechtel Group, Inc. board of directors and is the former chairman & CEO of Chevron.
• George P. Shultz is the former U.S. Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, former president of Bechtel, and a former Bechtel director. He is a former member of the board of Dillon, Read & Co. Inc.
• The late Caspar Weinberger served as the United States Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan. Prior to holding this position, Weinberger was the Vice President, Director, and General Counsel of the Bechtel Group of companies.
• Gen. John J. Sheehan, USMC (ret.) is the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic and the former Special Advisor to Asia for the U.S. Defense Department and the former General Manager of the Petroleum and Chemical Business Unit for Europe/Africa/Middle East/South West Asia and was also a Bechtel partner. He was also a member of the Defense Policy Board.
• Ross J. Connelly is the former CEO of Bechtel Energy Resources Corporation. He served on the Overseas Private Investment Corporation under George W. Bush.
• W. Kenneth Davis is a former Bechtel senior vice-president and is the former U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary.
• David Welch former assistant secretary of state under George W Bush.

Joint ventures and subsidiaries

• Aguas del Tunari
• Airport Group International Holdings, LLC
• Alterra Partners
• Alliance Bechtel-Linde
• Alterra Partners (UK)
• Amey inc (Tube Lines)
• Arabian Bechtel Corporation
• Bantrel Co. (Calgary)
• 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. (China)
• Bechtel COSAPI (Peru)
• Bechtel Constructors Corporation
• Bechtel Enterprises Holdings, Inc. (BEn)
• Bechtel Financing Services, LLC
• Power Generation Engineering and Services Co. (PGESCo) (Egypt)
• Bechtel Great Britain Ltd. (UK)
• Bechtel Infrastructure Corporation (BINFRA)
• Bechtel Jacobs Company LLC
• Bechtel Hanford Inc.
• Bechtel Marine Propulsion Corporation
• Bechtel McCone Parsons Corporation; Engineers, Constructors
• 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. (U.S.A.)
• Bechtel Plant Machinery, Inc.
• Bechtel Power Corp. (U.S.A.)
• 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
• Cimtas Pipe Fab. & Trading Ltd. Co. Bechtel-ENKA Joint Venture (Turkey)
• Cliffwood-Blue Moon Joint Venture, Inc.
• Colstrip Energy LP
• Dabhol Power Company (DBC), 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 Royal Dutch Shell)
• International Water
• IPSI LLC
• Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory
• Kwajalein Range Services LLC
• Lawrence Livermore National Security LLC
• Lectrix
• Lima Airport Partners
• Los Alamos National Security, LLC
• Marathon Oil Equatorial Guinea LNG
• NetCon Thailand (joint venture with Lucent)
• PSG International (partnership with General Electric)
• Saudi Arabian Bechtel Company (Saudi Arabia)
• Sequoia Ventures, Inc.
• Spruce Limited Partnership
• United Infrastructure Company (Chicago) (before Bechtel bought out its partner's share in 1998)
• Technology Ventures Group
• USGen Power Services, LP
• Welded Construction, LP provides pipeline construction services throughout the United States

Major projects

• Hoover Dam completed in 1936
• Trans-Alaska Pipeline System completed in 1977
• Bekme hydroelectric dam in Turkey completed in 1991
• Petrochemical plants in Iraq completed in 1991
• Dabhol Power Project Phase 1 completed in 1992
• Kuwait reconstruction after the Gulf War completed in 1993
• Channel Tunnel completed in 1994
• Hong Kong International Airport completed in 1998
• Tengiz Field expansion in Kazakhstan completed in 1999
• Chemical weapons disposal facility in Anniston, Alabama completed in 2001
• Three natural gas power plants in Turkey completed in 2002
• Fissile Materials Storage Facility at Mayak, Ozersk, Russian Federation completed in 2002
• Araucária Power project, Brazil completed in 2003
• Jorge Chávez International Airport expansion in Lima, Peru completed in 2005
• Big Dig completed in 2007
• Rebuilding of sections of Croatian highway between Zagreb and Split completed in 2008
• The Y-12 nuclear weapons plant and enriched uranium storage facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee completed in 2009
• Rrëshen-Kalimash Highway in Albania completed in 2010
• New Doha International Airport due to be completed in 2011
• New Muscat International Airport Terminal due to be completed in 2014
• Transylvania Motorway due to be completed in 2016
• Dulles Metrorail Extension due to be completed in 2016

Awards

For its contributions to the U.S.'s built environment, the company was presented with the Honor Award from the National Building Museum in 1998. At the ceremony, at which Stephen Bechtel, Jr. and Riley P. Bechtel accepted the award, former Secretary of State George P. Shultz said of the corporation, "Bechtel has been a wonderful ambassador around the world... No. 1, they're always there to solve problems - the world is full of critics, and what you want is people who are constructive, who are ready to solve problems."

Environmental record

On January 23, 1996, the Washington Department of Ecology fined Bechtel $5,000 for hazardous waste violations on an incident where a flying drum lid barely missed two workers due to the build-up of pressure inside a drum and improper closure operations. The penalty was issued because of inadequate worker training which led to an incorrectly labeled drum. Inspections also discovered that Bechtel kept inaccurate records keeping of cleanup waste, which violated state regulations.

In 1998, Bechtel was fined $90,000 for violating water quality laws in New Hampshire for constructing a gas pipeline, which would have leaked sediments into the stream that would increase turbidity and damage wetland habitats.

On October 29, 2001, the EPA fined Bechtel $30,383 at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory for not keeping records of any service being performed or of how much refrigerant was added to the cooling systems, which could increase annualized leak rates more than 15%.

In 2009, it was announced that Bechtel would team up with BrightSource Energy to build solar energy plants. The partnership will have Bechtel build very large solar power plants in the Mojave desert with groundbreaking beginning in 2010. The new plants will have a field of mirrors redirecting sunlight to a tower filled with water, which will then boil and turn the turbines.

See also

• Big Dig
• Cochabamba protests of 2000
• List of United States companies
• Top 100 US Federal Contractors

References

• McCartney, Laton Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story: The Most Secret Corporation and How It Engineered the World, 1988. (ISBN 0-345-36044-3)
• Mead, Robert Douglas. Journeys Down the Line: Building the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, Doubleday, 1978.
• Wallace, Jack W. Calship: An Industrial Achievement, 1941-1945, Jack W. Wallace & Associates, 1947.

External links

• Bechtel company website
• Bechtel companies grouped at OpenCorporates
• Welcome Aboard the Iraq Gravy Train, an editorial by Terry Jones, April 12, 2003.
• Bolivia Investigations: The Water Revolt, anti-globalisation viewpoint on Bechtel's involvement in Bolivia
• The Bechtel-bin Laden connection, CNN/Money Magazine, May 5, 2003.
• Bechtel's roots in the Mideast, San Francisco Chronicle, May 4, 2003
• Forbes List of Largest Companies
• St. Clair, Jeffrey, "More Powerful Than the US Army: Straight to Bechtel"
• Center For Responsive Politics