FLUOR wins NNSA contract; coincidentally employs former NNSA Administrator

Today it was announced that the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) awarded a contract to Fluor Marine Propulsion, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fluor Corporation, to manage its Naval Nuclear Laboratory. The NNSA's choice of Fluor is unsurprising considering that the company's president of Government Business, Thomas D'Agostino, is a former Administrator of the NNSA.

In May of this year, Fluor won another Energy Department contract involving the deactivation of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. The plant was part of the government's nuclear weapons complex that processed uranium from 1952 to 2013. The clean-up contract is worth $1.5 billion over 10 years.

According to the company's promotional material, Fluor also manages and operates the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, headquartered in New Orleans, for DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy. Fluor has been an Energy Department contractor for over 70 years, and has had a tight relationship with the federal government that began with the company's work on the Manhattan Project: in 1942, Fluor built cooling towers for use during the government's development of the atomic bomb.

Despite such a well-connected and lucrative history, Fluor still employs many influential Washington lobbyists specializing in contract procurement. Several of them worked on the House Energy Committee.

Of note is Susan Lent, who worked on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, where she, according to her Akin Gump bio, “...was involved in all aspects of the enactment of the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century.” Again it's important to point out how lobbyists have often actually written and helped pass the laws while in government service that benefit their later (or prior) lobbying clients.

In 2011, Fluor CEO David Seaton was appointed by Obama's Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, to serve as a member of the National Petroleum Council.

NNSA = National Nuclear Security Administration