ARGUMENT: Real energy securityPanic at the Pump and the Real Threat to Energy Security
On Friday, May 7, the Colonial Pipeline was taken offline by a cyber attack. A major piece of the national energy infrastructure, the 5,500-mile-long line carries 45% of all the fuel — including gasoline, aviation fuel, and home heating oil — consumed on the East Coast. Gregory Brew writes that “almost immediately, commentators compared the situation to the Arab oil embargo of 1973 to 1974. “Such thinking reflects years of scholarship and public discourse focusing on energy security: the ability of consumers and governments to maintain access to energy flows, at reasonable prices, and handle potential disruptions,” he writes. Such analogies, while tempting, focus attention on mythical dangers at the expense of real ones.
On Friday, May 7, the Colonial Pipeline was taken offline by a cyber attack. A major piece of the national energy infrastructure, the 5,500-mile-long line carries 45% of all the fuel — including gasoline, aviation fuel, and home heating oil — consumed on the East Coast. The attack has been attributed to the hacker collective Darkside. By May 11, gasoline prices had spiked as gas stations in the American South reported drained inventories and panicked consumers hoarded gasoline.
Gregory Brew writes in War on the Rocks that almost immediately, commentators compared the situation to the Arab oil embargo of 1973 to 1974. “Such thinking reflects years of scholarship and public discourse focusing on energy security: the ability of consumers and governments to maintain access to energy flows, at reasonable prices, and handle potential disruptions,” he writes.
He adds:
Energy security is frequently linked within American discourse to questions of supply — we’re secure as long as we can fill our tanks. The United States, in this vision, can pump its way to security, achieve “energy independence” (or, more recently, “energy dominance”), and render foreign attempts to withhold supplies ineffective.
Such analogies, while tempting, focus attention on mythical dangers at the expense of real ones. The embargo of 1973 to 1974 was a minor incident that did little to threaten U.S. energy security. The chief source of contemporary energy insecurity, exemplified by the Darkside attack on the Colonial Pipeline, comes from a range of actions that constitute sabotage — the interruption of energy’s movement — rather than from deliberate efforts by oil producers to withhold supply, as in the 1973 embargo. Sabotage generally refers to acts of violence meant to disrupt, destroy, or deny energy resources. Drawing on the work of social scientist Timothy Mitchell, however, sabotage can be defined in broader terms to encompass actions that disrupt energy flows — be they the result of human decisions or the unpredictable consequences of global climate change. While the embargo was itself a form of sabotage, the term can cover a wide variety of situations, suggesting the broad array of challenges to contemporary energy security.
The United States enjoys relatively strong energy security, Brew writes — particularly from attempted embargos, thanks to abundant supplies provided by a global market. “Yet the threat of sabotage, writ large, is very real, as the Colonial Pipeline shutdown illustrated.”
Conceiving of increased energy production as a protection against sabotage misses the big picture: “To achieve energy security, it is more important to strengthen infrastructure like the pipeline against sabotage while decreasing dependence on fossil fuel consumption and diversifying energy sources in general to reduce the risk of disruption.”
