Critical Energy Infrastructure: Operators, NATO, and Facing Future Challenges

Abstract

IntroductionCritical infrastructure enables modem society. It includes our communications and Internet, our banking systems, the means of safely delivering our supplies of food and water, health systems, defense installations, transportation networks, air traffic control systems, and logistics and port facilities. It also includes our energy and electricity supply. Power generation plants, electricity grids, and diesel, gasoline, oil, and natural gas distribution networks underpin our entire infrastructure. Critical energy infrastructure is the single most important part of the complex web of critical infrastructure. Without energy-particularly the regular supply of gasoline and diesel-no other element of our critical infrastructure can operate. This was clearly seen in the northeastern United States during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. That is why the priorities in the wake of the storm were first to reestablish power, and second to restore transit systems (buses and subways). Governments and relief organizations quickly realized that only then could other infrastructure, such as hospitals, become operational again.Threats to our energy infrastructure increasingly take different forms. They can arise from environmental hazards (as in the case of Hurricane Sandy, or the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan); industrial accidents; deliberate sabotage; and consequential sabotage. The latter two examples are closely connected, and will be explored further below.The Challenge of Energy SecurityThis article will highlight a threat to NATO's energy infrastructure that has been a concern for many decades. This threat is energy security. In 1912, the British Royal Navy converted its ships from coal to oil. Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, said Safety and certainty in oil lie in variety and variety alone. The United States and the U.K., with its oil fields in the Middle East, became the world's oil suppliers. That situation, however, was soon to change, a fact of which U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt was aware. In 1945, Roosevelt met with King Abdul-Aziz Ibn Saud, securing U.S. access to Saudi Arabia's oil output. Today the biggest potential challenge in terms of energy security is supply. There is a vast amount of oil, coal, and natural gas in the world. Each day, however, the world uses approximately 86 million barrels of oil. Daily world production is exactly that figure: 86 million barrels. So even a small 2 percent reduction in output caused by, for example, a crisis in Libya, has an enormous effect on the global price of oil. When such problems occur, only Saudi Arabia has the ability to quickly make up the deficit in the supply. The world economy is therefore enormously vulnerable to even a small drop in production.The security of the oil producing regions is vital to the NATO Alliance. In rural Iraq, it costs USD 15,000 for a family to connect to the electricity grid - an impossibly large amount. These communities, however, see vast oil wealth around them. It is vital that they are not tempted to work with those who want to damage the oil production infrastructure. It is particularly important-for our own security-that the international community help ensure that local communities in oil-rich countries benefit from their national energy resources. These benefits should include schools, hospitals, and infrastructure that oil revenues can bring, as well as help in fighting corruption. Once corruption starts, it is very hard to stop, as Nigeria's government has discovered. Corruption becomes ingrained in the whole system. Improving our energy infrastructure security means ensuring that communities in the Middle East and Africa do not have to turn to terrorist groups such as Boko Haram to feed their children. The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), established by BP's John Browne when he was the company's chief executive, is the ideal way to help ensure that oil money benefits the right people. …