The Colonial Pipeline Company ships gasoline and jet fuel from the Gulf Coast of Texas to the populous East Coast by way of 5,500 miles (8,850 kilometers) of pipeline, serving 50 million buyers.
The enterprise mentioned it was the victim of a cybersecurity attack involving ransomware — attacks that encrypt personal computer systems and seek to extract payments from operators.
“This Declaration addresses the emergency conditions creating a need for immediate transportation of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and other refined petroleum products and provides necessary relief,” the Department of Transportation mentioned in a statement.
The emergency declaration enables for fuel to be transported by road to the impacted states: Alabama, Arkansas, District of Columbia, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.
The declaration also delivers regulatory relief to industrial motor car operations that are aspect of the emergency assistance efforts.
Colonial mentioned earlier Sunday that it had opened some smaller sized delivery lines, but the key technique was not but back up and operating.
“While our mainlines remain offline, some smaller lateral lines between terminals and delivery points are now operational,” Colonial mentioned in a statement, adding it would “bring our full system back online only when we believe it is safe to do so.”
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“We have remained in contact with law enforcement and other federal agencies, including the Department of Energy who is leading the Federal Government response,” it added.
“Maintaining the operational security of our pipeline, in addition to safely bringing our systems back online, remain our highest priorities.”
Calls for enhanced oversight
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told CBS on Sunday that authorities have been working to stop any disruption to supplies.
Colonial, based in the southern state of Georgia, is the biggest pipeline operator in the United States by volume, generally transporting 2.5 million barrels of gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel and other refined petroleum merchandise per day.
The attack prompted calls from cybersecurity professionals for enhanced oversight of the sector to prepare for future threats.
“This attack is unusual for the US. But the bottom line is that attacks targeting operational technology — the industrial control systems on the production line or plant floor — are becoming more frequent,” Algirde Pipikaite, cyber tactic lead at the World Economic Forum’s Centre for Cybersecurity, told AFP on Saturday.
“Unless cybersecurity measures are embedded in a technology’s development phase, we are likely to see more frequent attacks on industrial systems like oil and gas pipelines or water treatment plants.”
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Gas costs jumped in the United States on Sunday following the ransomware attack. Analysts warn that costs could climb even greater if the pipeline is not reopened quickly. Oil costs rose more than one % Monday.
The United States was rocked in current months by news of two important cybersecurity breaches — the SolarWinds hack that compromised thousands of US government and private sector personal computer networks and was officially blamed on Russia and a potentially devastating penetration of Microsoft e mail servers.
The latter is believed to have impacted at least 30,000 US organizations which includes regional governments and was attributed to an aggressive Chinese cyberespionage campaign.