Houston Trial Underway in Battle Over Lost Construction Bid on $18B Mexican Oil Refinery

Trial began Friday in Houston in a multimillion-dollar dispute between Kellogg Brown & Root, the Houston-based global giant in engineering and construction services, and a Mexican construction company over a losing bid to participate in building a huge refinery in southern Mexico.

The Mexican company, Constructora Hostotipaquillo, known informally as “Hosto,” contends that it lost more than $186 million in potential revenue because KBR breached its fiduciary duty to Hosto in several key ways, causing the companies not to be awarded a lucrative contract for one phase of construction of a vast government-owned refinery in Dos Bocas, Tabasco. The two companies joined forces to bid on work related to the refinery project. The Dos Bocas refinery was originally projected to cost more than $8 billion; due to overruns and construction delays, the final cost was more than $18 billion.