Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story : The Most Secret Corporation and How It Engineered the Wo by Laton Mccartney (readict .txt) 📗

cancellation of the Qasim refinery, the Consumers Power Company informed Bechtel executives that it was abandoning construction of a massive nuclear plant at Midland, Michigan, a project that had been bringing Betchel hundreds of millions of dollars each y ear.

*

The Midland shutdown, which, among other things, cost 3,352 Bechtel employees their jobs, loosed a torrent of outrage within the company, much of it directed at antinuclear activists. Reflecting the depth of Bechtel’s anger was a message sent to all company managers by Harry Reinsch, president of the Bechtel Power Corporation.

Wrote Reinsch: “The demise of Midland ultimately was brought about by a virulent no-growth anti-power lobby seeking to weaken the very society in which it lives. That group has taken upon itself the responsibility to decide that the power that supplied growth is not needed. Under the current system it can be frivolous, deceitful and even malicious yet never held accountable for the impact and monumental cost it causes.

The no-growth, anti-power lobby must be accountable for its actions.”

The same day Reinsch fired off his letter, he also instructed Bechtel’s manager of government relations to seek a meeting with President Reagan. The purpose was to enlist the White House in drawing up a plan to, as Reinsch put it, “lay the foundation for a financially healthy electric utility industry … so that we can … avoid a national electricity crisis.” In plain words, Bechtel was seeking a financial bailout. Though the White House did appoint a cabinet-level “Council on Economic Affairs” working group to study the problem, nothing came of the bailout proposal, largely because so many of the nuclear industry’s problems were of its own making. The same day that Steve Bechtel, Jr., received word of the Midland shutdown, for instance, he was meet-230

THE NEXT GENERATION

W ith three major projects out the door in six months, and numerous other smaller ones delayed or cancelled, Bechtel’s revenues, which had reached a record $14.1 billion in 1983, plummeted the next year to $8. 2 billion, a drop-off of more than 40 percent. Even more worrisome was the decline in new work being booked, down from $11 billion in 198 3 to $6 billion in 1984. For the first time in more than a decade, Bechtel had lost its rating as the world’s largest construction and engineering firm.

No one took the news harder than 84-year-old Steve senior, who, despite a bad heart, continued to come into the office every day in his role as senior director. As the empire he had built began to crumble, he fretted to a reporter, “Like a savings account, when withdrawals begin to exceed deposits year after year, we know eventually there will be a day of reckoning. “2

Steve junior, whose aggressive nuclear and oil undertakings had, according to a number of Bechtel executives, deepened the company’s predicament, was even gloomier. “Our market fell apart on us,” he confessed to an interviewer, shortly after losing the Midland contract. 3

“The power business went on its nose; in the petroleum business, the price of oil came down and consumption leveled off. We got a little less sure of what the future held, where the opportunities lay and what the problems were. We feel the slack market is going to continue for a year or two,” he added. “You can’t hold your breath for that long.”

To make matters worse, a number of real estate and oil-drilling investments made during the Shultz era also suddenly soured. According to a