Biden declares state of emergency over pipelines - the move allows oil suppliers to transport their fuel via roadways while Colonial pipelines are down. I spoke w/ someone who works for oil company about what Colonial has told them and what they're doing zetter.substack.com/p/biden-declar…
Source tells me Colonial said pipelines would “not be fixed in 1-2 days, but won’t take 6 weeks.” He’s not sure why Colonial gave such wide timeframe but said it’s “very concerning for our interests.” They're scrambling to find more storage and may have to reduce refinery output
Source also tells me one reason Colonial might have taken operational network down - aside from being cautious - is because they may not be able to invoice customers who receive fuel if their IT network is locked with ransomware, preventing them from being paid for fuel.
Colonial’s op network controls flow of fuel from pipeline to distributors then passes info to ticketing system on IT network to automatically invoice distributors. If ticket system is locked and pipeline is still flowing Colonial can't monitor flow and send invoices to get paid.
If Colonial didn’t already have an alternate plan in place to collect flow data manually and invoice manually, it may have to keep the pipelines down until it can determine an efficient way to do this via the pipeline. Otherwise transporting via trucks/ships is the alternate.
This creates a new prob: the US currently has shortage of fuel tank drivers. 25% of fuel trucks currently sit unused due to shortage of drivers from layoff/retirements during pandemic; fuel drivers need special safety training preventing workforce from being replenished quickly
Note, that I've updated the story published on my Zero Day substack to correct an error reported by the @BBC. Biden did not announce a state of emergency; the gov passed an emergency waiver to the Jones Act, which would allow non-US maritime vessels to transport the oil.
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