Halliburton to open technology centre in India

Halliburton Co, the world's second-largest oilfield-services provider, will open a technology centre in India in July, drawing from a deep well of overseas engineers as it expands in the Eastern Hemisphere.

The centre and another such facility in Singapore are part of a drive by Halliburton to reduce its reliance on North America. The Singapore facility is scheduled to open in December or January, Chief Operating Officer Andrew Lane said yesterday in an interview at the company's headquarters in Houston.

Halliburton is trying to expand Eastern Hemisphere operations to the point where they drive half of sales, up from 35 per cent now. To win more business in a stronghold of Schlumberger, the largest oilfield contractor, Chief Executive Officer David Lesar is moving his office to the United Arab Emirates, making Dubai a second corporate headquarters.

"You pick up a map and you look at were the reserves are, the reserves are in the Eastern Hemisphere," Lesar, 53, said in the interview.

The Dubai move, announced in March, drew criticism from Democrats in Congress, who suggested the company was looking for a tax haven or fleeing federal scrutiny. Some of the same critics repeatedly accused the company's former KBR Inc subsidiary of getting preferential treatment on US government contracts in Iraq. US Vice-President Dick Cheney was Lesar's predecessor as Halliburton CEO.

Halliburton said it won't get any legal, tax or market-access advantages with the move. For Lesar, who will remain a US citizen, it was a question of winning contracts and deciding where to place the company's top salesman.

"We have to position ourselves to grow in the Eastern Hemisphere," Lesar said. "I thought of a lot of ways to do that, and at the end of the day, the conclusion I came down to is, I have to lead by example."

The East, it turns out, is fertile ground for a company reliant on engineers and scientists to advance energy technologies.

Lane said that when Halliburton advertised 20 positions in India for people with master's or doctoral degrees in chemistry or chemical engineering, it got 2,300 applications. When the company sought 100 entry-level Indian engineers willing to work anywhere in the hemisphere, it received 24,000 resumes.

"Those kinds of numbers don't exist in Western Europe and the US in the current graduates which used to be the basis for a lot of our hiring," Lane said. "So it really is, not only Halliburton, but the industry moving to where the talent is."