Monday letters: Protecting our pipelines

Regarding “TSA under scrutiny over pipeline security failures” (HoustonChronicle.com, May 10): The story focused on recent criticism of the Transportation Security Administration’s guidelines, ignoring the effective and longstanding partnership and collaboration that has existed between TSA and industry since 2007, and failed to highlight the many comprehensive initiatives advanced by the natural gas and oil industry to prevent cyberattack intrusions.

Industry recognizes that its assets are the targets of a growing number of increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks — and that the answer lies in perpetual vigilance, constantly evolving and flexible industry initiatives, best-in-class international cybersecurity standards, and close collaboration with government, including TSA.

A variety of established public-private partnerships such as the Oil and Natural Gas Information Sharing and Analysis Center give industry and government bodies the opportunity to collaborate on risk identification and management to adapt quickly and effectively. Flexibility is critical to assessing the ever-shifting threat - and makes much more sense than the government creating additional prescriptive regulations that assume one-size-fits-all.

In conjunction with industry’s leading efforts on protecting energy infrastructure from cyberattacks, TSA’s Pipeline Security Guidelines offer customized corporate security plans for companies to pair with their own measures. These guidelines have helped to clarify the threats to the industry.

Robin Rorick, vice president of Midstream and Industry Operations at the American Petroleum Institute

The article exploring cybersecurity measures in the pipeline industry does not include key information when explaining to readers how pipeline systems operate and the level of federal government involvement in that process.

With more than 300,000 miles of natural gas transmission pipelines crisscrossing the country, pipeline operators take cybersecurity very seriously. The suggestion that a hacker could gain control of a pipeline and weaponize energy infrastructure to “create an explosion in a densely populated city” is simply not rooted in reality. If a pipeline system was successfully penetrated, the safety systems and engineering design of the pipeline would counteract this nefarious act.

The physics of the natural gas system are completely different than the physics of the bulk electric system. This lends itself to fundamental differences in how the systems are balanced. While the electric system must be balanced in a matter of seconds, the natural gas system has hours or more, allowing time to isolate an impacted pipeline and re-direct gas around the affected area or from other supply sources.

The federal government also plays a key role in mitigating cybersecurity threats through the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency, which coordinates intergovernmental and private-sector efforts to foster closer partnerships. For example, last year, TSA and Department of Homeland Security’s National Risk Management Center announced the Pipeline Cybersecurity Assessment Initiative. Through this program, DHS and TSA conduct joint, comprehensive cybersecurity assessments of natural gas infrastructure to better understand both the unique risks faced by our pipeline system as well as how we can best protect it.

Don Santa, president and CEO of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America

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