This is old, but I never saw it.Sometimes, you can't be disgusted enough.

[Horse with no Name]

http://inspiredeconomist.com/2010/06/17/why-did-halliburton-buy-an-oil-cleanup-company-8-days-before-the-oil-spill/

>>>snip
There are innumerable bits of information floating around in the battle over the narrative of this national disaster. This one is particularly disturbing. From AOL’s Daily Finance just over a week before the spill:

“…the days of independence have come to an end for Boots & Coots as the company has agreed to sell out to Halliburton (HAL) for $240.4 million.”

M&A in the industrial and oil services sectors is totally normal, but the timing in this case, is not. Boots & Coots sure seems like the perfect company to own if it would soon become necessary to get more involved with some oil disaster (emphasis mine):

Boots & Coots has two core businesses. First, there is Pressure Control, which involves prevention and risk-control services for oil- and gas-well fires and blowouts. A key to this area was the acquisition of John Wright, which developed sophisticated technologies to measure well