Unfortunately, searching on these numbers (and variants without dashes) in Google yields nothing. So I tried a different path, with more success.

Going in through the front door

The DOD News Office releases information about any contract awarded by the DOD that is valued at more than $5 million (there’s a whole science to determining contract value for some of the more complicated contract structures, but that’s a different story). Looking at the current month’s reports, I saw no mention of contracts awarded to Kellogg Brown and Root, meaning that either reporting has been delayed or the value of the order is less than $5 million. But looking at the archive for December 2001, when the FAQ says the LOGCAPIII contract was awarded, we find details in the December 14, 2001 contract newsletter:

Brown and Root Services, a Division of Kellogg Brown and Root, Inc. of Arlington, Va., is being awarded an unlimited firm-fixed-price/cost-plus-award-fee/cost-plus-fixed-fee delivery order for Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP) to use civilian contractors to provide the Army with an additional means to adequately support the force by performing selected services in wartime and other operations. Work will be performed in Houston, Texas and is expected to be completed by Jan. 31, 2012 with nine, one-year options. Bids were electronically posted and three bids received. The contracting activity is the Operations Support Command, Rock Island, Ill., (DAAA09-02-D-0007).

(Note: This isn’t either a DACA or DACW number. The contract was actually issued by another part of the Army. So much for proceeding from first principles!)

So slugging this contract number into Google, we find a bunch of records related to orders against this base contract living on a server in Ogden. But we still don’t have a record of the actual order that was cut. The FAQ on Halliburton’s site says that it’s an order for a contingency plan to extinguish the oil well fires in Iraq. So how much is it worth? It has to be less than $5 million, unless the DOD is changing its communications policy about how it reports contracts over that threshold, or it would have been in the contracts newsletter. For a contingency plan, it’s probably under $100,000 (based on nothing but gut instinct).

But this delivery order isn’t the one to watch; this one just gets them in the game. Unless Kellogg Brown and Root really screw it up, they’ll get the follow-on award to execute on putting out the oil fires. And someone has to rebuild the Iraqi oil business. And them’s real bux.

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