ECSI wraps up SPR contract and signs a few more

Working from the perimeter. When the Department of Energy (DoE) realized after 9/11 it would have to engage in a crash security upgrade of its Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) sites, Clifton, New Jersey-based integrator Electronic Control Security (ECSI) (OTCBB: EKCS) must have been an easy choice. Securing energy facilities is the company’s main line of trade (they handle prisons and military bases as well), and it has done so all over the world, including Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, and Japan. In 2002, DoE awarded ECSI an $8.5 million conract to secure SPR facilities in Louisiana and Texas, and the project is now 90 percent complete. The success is just one of a few. ECSI also recently received a $1 million contract to secure liquid natural gas facilities in Texas and classified sites in South Korea.

According to ECSI founder Arthur Barchenko, the company takes a “holistic” approach to energy security. The first step, after a detailed assessment is made, is to encourage the facility being secured to buy up as much of the surrounding land as possible. Simply pushing out the perimeter adds security by making it harder for terrorists to surveil the area, and by creating more room between the fence and the facility, the more likely it is that an intruder will be caught before he reaches sensitive areas. From there, security measures employed are those routine for any highly critical site: entry control portals, pulse infrared, facial recognition technology, RFID tagging of vehicles, as well as X-ray and explosives detection equipment.

We note also the company’s unusual choice for a Web domain: www.anti-terrorism.com. Not only does this sum up the idea quite well, it suggests the company had its wits about it in the early Internet age. No doubt, many other companies wish they had been so prescient.

-read more in this company news release; company Web site