How a Gas Pipeline Attack Could Cause Mass Outages
The Sept. 2019 attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities illuminate the risk of a natural gas pipeline attack here in the US, according to FERC’s chairman, Neil Chatterjee. He believes that even a single gas pipeline attack could cause a ripple effect on the nation’s grid.
Impact of a Gas Pipeline Attack on the Grid
In this day and age, many power plants are fueled by natural gas – in fact, natural gas is currently the leading power source in the US., having recently surpassed coal due to environmental benefits as well as the expansion of the shale industry. Today, a single large gas pipeline can serve many natural gas plants, which means that one compromised pipeline can impact multiple utilities and regions.
Thus, our overall natural gas infrastructure is a security risk. Making matters worse is the fact that the resources dedicated to protecting the nation’s 3 million miles of pipeline infrastructure are inadequate. For example, the pipeline security branch of Transportation Security Administration – the agency responsible for protecting against pipeline attacks – only has 6 full time employees, less than half of the number of employees it had just 5 years ago. Adding insult to injury is the fact that the TSA’s pipeline risk assessment has not been updated since 2014.
The good news is that FERC, the GAO and other important entities are placing pressure on the TSA to improve security plans and protocols, and as such, a multi-agency security committee was formed in April 2019. But these efforts are not enough – we’re not there yet. And our country’s enemies are well aware of this.
Hopefully the Saudi Arabia drone attack will serve as an eye-opener. I certainly hope so, because I can see how under-protected our pipeline infrastructure currently is. Hopefully, improvements will happen before a terroristic gas pipeline attack occurs here in the US. We shall see!
