The Industrial Energy Consumers of America (IECA) asked congressional energy leaders to hold hearings examining natural gas pipeline cybersecurity.
“It is well known that US national energy infrastructure is regularly under attack by entities that wish to do great harm. When so much is resting on the reliability of natural gas pipelines, we cannot help but be concerned that the security requirements under the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) are voluntary, not mandatory,” said IECA Pres. Paul A. Cicio.
“As very large consumers of natural gas, we understand that implementation of mandatory security requirements on gas pipelines will increase costs that will be passed on to us,” Cicio said in an Aug. 29 letter to US Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chair Lisa Murkowski (R-Alas.) and Ranking Minority Member Maria E. Cantwell, and to US House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) and Ranking Minority Member Frank A. Pallone Jr. (D-NJ).
“However, one successful attack could shut down tens of thousands of manufacturing facilities at a cost of tens of millions of dollars per day or more, for each facility. The economic harm could be staggering,” Cicio warned.
Asked for a response, the Interstate Natural Gas Association told OGJ on Sept. 4 that gas pipelines are committed to promoting the nationwide system’s security, reliability, and resilience. “Our industry has established robust and comprehensive protocols and cybersecurity safeguards to ensure the reliability of America’s natural gas network, which are outlined on this fact sheet,” it said in a statement.
Cicio noted that in contrast to the US Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversee interstate gas pipelines, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. has set mandatory standards that are enforced to secure the reliability of the nation’s electric power grid.
“It appears to us that given NERC’s action to ensure electric grid security, gas pipelines are the weak link in US national energy infrastructure. TSA has the authority to promulgate security regulations and has not done so, and the voluntary standards are not enforced. News reports cite that the TSA has only six full-time people assigned to oversee over 300,000 miles of gas pipelines. These statistics do not give us confidence that there is adequate security,” IECA’s president said.
He said that IECA supports an enforceable nationwide gas pipeline security standard but emphasized that the accountability needs to rest with the pipeline companies themselves. “We do not support the creation of a NERC-type organization for gas pipelines. One could make the argument that NERC’s responsibilities could be changed to include gas pipelines, given [its] in-house knowledge and the importance of the gas/electricity interface issues,” Cicio said.
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