 Energy Business Reports For Immediate Release Press Contact: Barbara Drazga
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Securing Energy Assets and Infrastructure
New report from Energy Business Reports details the challenges and solutions for protecting critical energy assets
Phoenix, AZ –January 25, 2007 – Recent terrorist activities have raised red flags about the vulnerability of our nation’s critical energy assets, including oil and gas infrastructure, transmission grids, power plants, storage, pipelines, and IT systems. Are energy supplies vulnerable to attack? How can we protect transportation systems and transmission lines? How are government and the utility industry working together to protect the public? Is the US prepared to defend itself against cyber-terrorism? These and many other questions are addressed in a new 146-page report on energy security published by Energy Business Reports (www.EnergyBusinessReports.com).
nergy security is a complex, multi-faceted issue. The threats facing our nation's energy industry continue to evolve and present new challenges. The interdependency of the oil, natural gas, and electric infrastructures are increasingly complex and not easily understood. The impact of a major terrorist attack directed against this fragile and interdependent infrastructure could have drastic consequences.
Dependence on Foreign Oil: Historically, the U.S. has pursued a three-pronged strategy for mitigating the vulnerabilities associated with dependency on oil from unstable and/or hostile nations: diversifying sources of oil; managing the inventory in a strategic petroleum reserve; and increasing the efficiency of energy consumption. In recent years, the focus has been principally on finding new and larger sources of petroleum.
Rapidly growing demand for oil, however, has had the effect of neutralizing this initiative, depleting existing reserves faster than new, economically exploitable deposits could be brought on line. Consequently, diversification of sources is only a stop-gap solution that can, at best, have a temporary effect on oil supply and, hence, on national security. Conservation can help, but with oil consumption expected to grow by 60% over the next 25 years, conservation alone will not be a sufficient solution.
Clearly, U.S. energy security cannot be achieved by closing borders to energy imports or by limiting energy exports. Attempts to do this would cripple the U.S. economy, limit trade, slow the creation of wealth around the globe, and delay the spread of technology to developing nations. Energy isolationism would also deprive Americans of an important foreign policy tool. So what other options exist?
Diversifying Sources: The most effective way to improve U.S. energy security today is to discover and produce more domestic energy while, at the same time, accelerating the development of innovations and technologies that increase production from existing reserves and ensure their transmission to end-users. In addition, strategies to conserve energy, improve efficiency, and develop more alternative energy sources contribute to energy diversification.
Securing Energy Infrastructure: The task of ensuring the security of the U.S. energy infrastructure falls on the members of the United States Energy Association, an organization that works with federal, state, and local officials to protect the U.S. energy infrastructure and the public’s health. Sector-specific risk assessments for the nation’s coal, oil and petroleum, natural gas, and electricity infrastructures are detailed in this report. The report also offers recommendations, risk analysis tools, best practices, and risk management checklists to assess energy infrastructure vulnerability.
The Threat of Cyber-terrorism: Efforts to uncover IT system vulnerabilities and develop effective countermeasures to cyber-terrorism have so far thwarted efforts to bring down the energy industry through cyber attack. However, hacking and cyber attack techniques are constantly evolving and becoming more sophisticated, and potential adversaries have pursued progressively more devious and insidious means to exploit flaws in system components, telecommunication methods, and common operating systems found in modern energy systems with the intent to infiltrate and sabotage vulnerable control systems. Sophisticated cyber attack tools require little technical knowledge to use and can be found on the Internet, as can manufacturers’ technical specifications for popular control system equipment. Commercial software used in conventional IT systems, which offers operators good value and performance but poor security, is beginning to replace custom-designed control system software.
Assessing Vulnerability: Ensuring energy security is an extremely complex process. Before security measures can be implemented, energy companies must first assess their vulnerability, develop a security strategy, and establish security policies. A crucial step in this process is to conduct security audits and vulnerability assessments of electric power grid systems. This includes management and control systems and an energy firm’s business systems, as well as the linkages between them.
Conclusion: In its most fundamental sense, energy security is assured when a nation can deliver energy economically, reliably, in an environmentally sound and safe manner, and in quantities sufficient to support its economic and defense needs. To do this requires policies that support expansion of all elements of the energy supply and delivery infrastructure, with sufficient storage and generating reserves, diversity, and redundancy to meet the demands of economic growth.
About the Publisher: "Securing Energy Assets and Infrastructure" is published by Energy Business Reports (www.EnergyBusinessReports.com), an energy industry think tank and leading source for energy industry information and research products. Other reports available from EBR include: Weather Risk Management, Natural Gas Storage Effects on Energy Trading, Fuel Cell Technology, The Outlook for Unconventional Gas, and Market Potential, and Understanding the China Energy Market. This reports can be ordered online at www.EnergyBusinessReports.com ### |
