Information Exchange: Publications

Research Brief No. 1: Vulnerabilities in the Oil and Gas Sector: International Terrorist Attacks

Author: ICIS

Sector: Energy

Publication type: Acrobat PDF

The Oil and Gas sector constitutes a critical infrastructure system that is vital to the functioning of the World economy. As a result, oil and gas infrastructures have often been the target of terrorist attacks in many countries. An analysis of international terrorist attacks against this sector indicates that: - There was a larger number of terrorist attacks after 1997, compared to the 1990-1996 time period. - During the last few years the number of terrorist attacks against the oil and gas sector has increased in certain countries such as Turkey, Pakistan, Russia and Iraq. - In several countries, terrorist attacks against the oil and gas sector range between 1% and 20% of total terrorist attacks. The relative economic importance of attacks against this sector, however, is likely to be higher than this level. - Although the number of injuries and fatalities associated with terrorist attacks against the oil and gas sector is relatively low, there is a positive association between the number of attacks and the number of injuries and fatalities. - The most common components targeted by terrorists are distribution facilities (69.5%) and production facilities (15.1%). Within distribution facilities the most commonly attacked components are pipelines.

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Date Created: June 2006; Date Posted: November 2006

Projects:

• Empirically Based Analysis of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) Systems and Critical Infrastructures

Events:

• Process Control Systems Security Workshop: Demonstrations of Security Solutions and Research Findings for the Oil and Gas Industry

Sectors:

• Energy

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