AMEC plugs into £277m Iraqi contract

AMEC, Britain's largest engineering services company, has bagged a US contract worth $500m (£277m) to restore Iraq's battered electricity sector.

The deal, to operate and maintain power-generation facilities in the war-torn country has been awarded to FluorAMEC, a joint-venture 49% held by AMEC with the balance held by US group Fluor. News of the win came the day after two other British firms won £43.6m in Iraqi contracts from the Pentagon.

AMEC executives said hours before the deal was announced that they had set their sights on securing $1.5bn of Iraqi work as they revealed a 7% rise in 2003 net profit to £112.5m. The award vindicates AMEC's strategy of teaming up with a US partner to boost its chances of winning the green light from Pentagon planners.

A flurry of US contract multi-million dollar awards is expected soon as Washington seeks to raise the momentum of its rebuilding effort.

Meanwhile, Vice President Dick Cheney's old company Halliburton has admitted that it overcharged the US military by tens of millions of dollars on several different contracts worth $2.7bn.

News of the admission comes as the Pentagon has asked the US Justice Department to join its inquiry into alleged overcharging by Halliburton on fuel brought into Iraq by the company.

The Defence Audit Agency has so far found that Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root failed to tell contract managers it had ended subcontracts for providing food to US troops in Iraq in a contract worth a total of $1bn.