The company was established in 1919 as the New Method Oil Well Cementing Company by Erle Halliburton. In 1920, he took control over a wild gas well near Wilson, Oklahoma, using cement, for W.G. Skelly. On March 1, 1921, the company’s method and means of excluding water from oil wells was patented. Halliburton also invented a revolutionary cement jet mixer. By 1922, the company, using the name Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Company (HOWCO), was already exhibiting continued prosperity.
The company officially adopted the name Halliburton Company on July 5, 1961. In 1963, it became the first business in Oklahoma to garner the Presidential “E” for Export flag, as recognition of its notable contributions to the foreign trade.
While it remains incorporated in the United States, it has two headquarters: one in Houston and one in Dubai. The company’s Chairman and CEO David Lesar holds office and resides in Dubai due to his mission of focusing on the company’s Eastern Hemisphere Growth. The firm’s major business segment, Energy Services Group (ESG), provides technical products and services for natural gas and petroleum production and exploration. Meanwhile, its former subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), is a premier construction company that specializes in oil fields, refineries, pipelines, and chemical plants. Halliburton announced in April 2007 that it has sold the said division. This thus severed the two’s corporate relationship with each other.
Halliburton has also been involved in various controversies, including that of the Deepwater Horizon explosion. As of 2011, its reported revenue amounts to $24.8 billion. It is traded on the NYSE under the symbol HAL.