House Protests $1.7bn Contract to Halliburton

The executive and legislative arms of government may be on a fresh collision course over the recent awards of engineering contracts to US oil services company Halliburton, which was earlier recommended for ban by the House of Representatives. Also, the Senate Committee on Petroleum Resources (Upstream) has invited the Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company Limited (SNEPCO) to appear before the committee on Wednesday and explain how the exploration cost of the Bonga Deep Offshore Field project shot up to $3.816 billion from its original cost of $2.9 billion.