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| Fig. 1: Current U.S. oil and gas pipelines. (Source: Wikimedia Commons. Courtesy of the EIA) |
The oil and gas industry serves as the world's primary fuel source and is one of the most important sectors in the global economy today. Oil and gas in the United States, a leading producer and consumer in this industry, has seen a significant increase in production after the Shale Revolution. This allowed for the United States to have a strong domestic presence in oil and gas production, as seen in Fig. 1, which displays the number of U.S. pipelines, the primary transportation method used for these resources. In 2020, the U.S. produced approximately 33.5 trillion cubic feet in dry natural gas; additionally, in the same year, around 12 million barrels of crude oil was produced daily. Today, petroleum remains the most consumed fuel source in the United States, at a rate of 17 million barrels consumed per day. Natural gas, of which U.S. consumption had reached a total of 30 trillion cubic feet in 2020, is also projected to grow because of expected low prices and the industrial sector's needs. [1]
With the advance in digitalized systems, cybersecurity concerns have risen as attackers identify vulnerabilities in Industry Control Systems (ICS) and Operational Technology (OT) infrastructures. The consequences of these exploits are severe, affecting entire areas of populace and spreading damage in both future security and economic costs. The lack of cybersecurity resilience in the energy sector is only further exacerbated by issues such as outdated systems, critical security patches, and the interconnectedness of cybersecurity infrastructure with third-party services and operators, which creates a cascading effect of failures and dependencies. [2] In fact, the complexity and scale of this is what makes the vulnerabilities in our infrastructure so difficult to fix and secure.
However, it is crucial to understand the implications of a failing and increasingly vulnerable cybersecurity, particularly for a sector as important as the oil and gas industry. The most recent and infamous cyberattack in the oil and gas sector involved hackers targeting the Colonial Pipeline in the U.S., responsible for supplying nearly half of the oil on the east coast. Forced to stop operations, the company halted deliveries in 5,500 miles of pipeline, leading to soaring prices and a total of $90 million in ransoms paid from various sources. [3]
Current trends in the pattern of global cybersecurity attacks reveal that attacks are commonly done through "spear phishing through email, external attack (malware or injection) to exposed devices and user execution of some sort, either intentionally (malicious insiders) or erroneously (e.g. employee opening an email, or wrong command execution)." Additionally, 42% of attacks are done through some form of information theft or industrial espionage, while 32% take control of OT infrastructures and 45.1% cause Denial-of-Service or otherwise unavailable systems. [2]
However, it remains doubtful that lasting change can be immediately implemented. Again, the chief issue is that the the technological infrastructure remains tightly coupled yet controlled by different third-party services and operators. Because this is so deeply entrenched within the sector, it will most likely take time to decouple these roots in the U.S. oil and gas industry.
© Joanna Jo. The author warrants that the work is the author's own and that Stanford University provided no input other than typesetting and referencing guidelines. The author grants permission to copy, distribute and display this work in unaltered form, with attribution to the author, for noncommercial purposes only. All other rights, including commercial rights, are reserved to the author.
[1] "Annual Energy Outlook 2021 with Projections to 2050," U.S. Energy Information Administration, February 2021.
[2] G. Stergiopoulos, D. A. Gritzalis and E. Limnaios, "Cyber-Attacks on the Oil and Gas Sector: A Survey on Incident Assessment and Attack Patterns," IEEE Access 8, 128440 (2020).
[3] R. Browne, "Hackers Behind Colonial Pipeline Attack Reportedly Received $90 million in Bitcoin Before Shutting Down," CNBC, 18 May 21.
