Apparent cyberattack takes US fuel pipe operator's website down
The website for the operator of the Colonial fuel pipeline in the US East Coast was the apparent target of a cyberattack May 11, just days after a ransomware attack idled the company’s infrastructure.
A “502 Bad Gateway” error was returned for much of the morning for users trying to access “www.colpipe.com,” leaving the market guessing on the status of the fuels pipeline. Various news outlets, including the Reuters news service, attributed the outage to a cyberattack.
|
Advertisement: The National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago Limited (NGC) NGC’s HSSE strategy is reflective and supportive of the organisational vision to become a leader in the global energy business. |
On May 7, the pipeline itself was the target of a ransomware attack by a Russian-language group dubbed DarkSide. In response, the US federal government formed an inter-agency task force to look into the issue.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said May 10 that president Joe Biden called on federal agencies to do what they could to alleviate any fuel shortages.
“The administration is continually assessing the impact of this ongoing incident on fuel supply for the East Coast,” she said. “We are monitoring supply shortages in parts of the Southeast and are evaluating every action the administration can take to mitigate the impact as much as possible.”
The 8,850-km pipeline carries as much as 2.5mn barrels/day of fuel, supplying about half of the capacity for gasoline, jet fuel and other products to the East Coast market. In response, the US Department of Transportation declared a state of emergency across 17 states and the District of Columbia that waives any regulations that would impede fuel deliveries.
Before its website went down, the company had said it expected to restore operational service by the end of the week. Several laterals were working early in the week.
Louise Dickson, an oil market analyst for Norwegian consultancy Rystad Energy, said the market reaction so far has been relatively subdued.
“As most operational service is expected to be restored by the end of this week, traders have removed yesterday’s price premiums, realising there are enough commercial gasoline stocks to tide over the currently expected duration of the crisis,” she said.
As of 7:45 a.m. ET, West Texas Intermediate was down about 1% to trade at $64.26/b. The price for Brent was also down by about 1% to trade at $67.64/b.