Fluor Corp. announced Nov. 6 that its net earnings for the third quarter of 2006 dropped to $27 million from $131 million last year, due in large part to cost overruns on a series of U.S. embassy projects. Fluor recorded losses of $133 million on U.S. embassy projects, primarily in Haiti, Kazakhstan and Jamaica, as well as $13 million on a construction project at the Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan. During a Nov. 7 analysts conference, Alan Boeckmann, Fluor's CEO, said the company would pursue claims against the government for changed conditions on the embassy projects and noted that three levels of management in the embassy group have been replaced by "seasoned Fluor veterans." Fluor will exit the embassy construction market and no longer take government projects on a fixed-price basis, he says. In addition, the industrial and infrastructure group took a loss of $22 million relating to a highway project in California. However, new contract awards for the third quarter were $4.8 billion, including $2.9 billion in new oil and gas sector work, up 89% from a year ago. The firm's backlog rose 10% to a record of $19.8 billion.