Pipelines, like cables and substations, are the type of dull, critical infrastructure that Americans don’t think about until, suddenly, they must. On May 7th a cyber-attack prompted Colonial Pipeline, a firm headquartered in Georgia, to shut down a tube stretching from Texas to New Jersey that supplies about 45% of the petrol and diesel used on the east coast. Federal officials confirmed that DarkSide, a ransomware gang believed to be based in the former Soviet Union, was responsible. “We’re not talking about some small pipeline,” explains Amy Myers Jaffe, author of “Energy’s Digital Future”, a new book. “We’re talking about the jugular.”
On May 12th Colonial Pipeline said it had “initiated the restart of pipeline operations”, a carefully worded statement that conveys both the difficulty of returning to normal and a desire to contain panic. That day average petrol prices topped $3 a gallon for the first time since 2014. Much depends on whether more drivers rush to buy petrol, as they did in the oil shocks of the 1970s. If 30m car-owners with half a tank decide to fill up, reckons s&p Global Platts Analytics, a data group, they would guzzle over 4m barrels, more than the recent daily demand of the entire eastern seaboard. Many are already buying while they can. Long queues formed at petrol stations in the south-east on May 11th. Some stations limited purchases; others ran out of fuel. The White House said it had established “an inter-agency response group” to “ensure a continuing flow of fuel”.
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