The US military has awarded Halliburton nearly $5 billion in new contracts in Iraq under a giant logistics contract that has so far earned the firm $9.1 billion.
The US Army Field Support Command in Rock Island, Illinois, said the military signed the work order with Halliburton unit Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) in May.
The new deal, worth $4.97 billion over the next year, was not made public when it was signed because the army did not consider such an announcement necessary, an army spokeswoman said.
Texas-based Halliburton, which was run by Vice President Dick Cheney from 1995 to 2000, has been under scrutiny for its contracts in Iraq, and several US government agencies are looking into whether it overcharged for some work.
Halliburton said the new spending package was approved by the army after the company submitted estimated costs for the year based on services requested.
The $4.97 billion figure represented the maximum under the contract, and the actual amount could be lower since the army doled out the work on an incremental basis, she said.
A top US Army procurement official said last week Halliburton's deals in Iraq were the worst example of contract abuse she had ever seen, a claim KBR strongly rejected as "political rhetoric".