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Colonial Pipeline…Not So Fast…
On May 7th, 2021 Colonial Pipeline suffered a ransomware attack. Unable to access or trust its data network, the company that transports almost half of all the refined hydrocarbons used on America’s heavily populated east coast shut down its 5,500 mile pipeline network.
The network stretches from Houston, one of the nation’s crude pipeline hubs, and the place were most of America’s refining capacity resides, through the southeastern states and up the eastern seaboard with branches along the way, and ends in Linden, New Jersey.
Colonial didn’t transport just gasoline, it also supplied much of the southeast and middle eastern seaboard with diesel and jet fuel. Colonial’s system allowed for some hydrocarbon storage, but when the pumps stopped so did the normal daily delivery of over 100 million barrels of refined products.
It took two days to run the storage tanks dry, and a few days more for traffic to stop.
It had to happen because there is no backup to Colonial’s system. For those who’ve never thought about it, the world doesn’t generate enough electricity to replace the hydrocarbons we use for transportation, and civilization depends not just on…
