Petrolem Pipeline Hack 7

[hacksaw]

How can a modern system, like this be hacked? Do they need to go back to pneumatic controls?

 

[RedSnake]

Compared to Sweden you are way behind 7,15 USD/gal or ca 15,5 SEK/l or 1,55 EUR/l.

/A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

 

[RedSnake]

Don't know if it's related but the Dow Jones Industrial average is down 500 points ...

Could also be because Bill och Melinda Gates are getting a divorced, they are afraid it will upset the whole world economy. ;-)

/A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

 

[1503-44]

What appear to be upsets to the usual transport mode rankings might be observed in an area, for example, when pipeline capacity in the oil field region is non-existent, or is there is no more available pipeline capacity in the area (actually more common), and if a railroad is already nearby. Rail and truck may be the only transport option available in the short term, but that is also when railroad and trucking rates tend to increase, so it becomes hard to distinguish between seeing rail and trucks doing transport, assuming it is the cheapest option, solely because that's what you see on the surface, but actually it is a temporary condition that will dissappear as soon as pipeline capacity becomes available. I guarantee that the rails and trucks are not doing it for cheap. They jacked up the rates to make it worth all the expenses of keeping iron moving around the countryside, rather than setting it in the ground and not having to push it around at all.

Dilbit ain't easy.

In 1997 I was working in Venezuela desiging two 128 mile long hot heavy oil (bitumen/diluent) pipeline and diluent return line for Maraven's Orinoco Heavy Crude. We could take diluent delivery at the marine terminal to fill the diluent pipeline and it transported that up to the oil field. There the diluent was blended the heavy and heated to 70C. It went back to the coast to the "Upgrader" in the dilbit pipeline, where the "dil" and the "bit" were separated and the dil put back into the dil pipeline to complete the loop. I'm not sure, but I think it could have been one of the first long hot oil pipelines. At least it was a first for me and for Venezuela. The bitumen had a SG of 0.97, almost as heavy as water and by itself was a solid at 20C. I say a "hot oil" pipeline, because only the dilbit was heated once at the oil production facilities. The pipeline itself was not heated with a tracing, nor was it insulated by anything other than the surrounding soil. It made for an interesting deesign optimization problem.

Even the diluted mix was extremely viscous at ambient temperatures, but with enough heat, we could get it flowing pretty much like a normal crude....eventually. The problem was starting up the pipeline. On first start, when it was cold, we could manage to fill the line, but the surrounding soil cooled the dilbit off, starting at the outer region of flow near the pipe wall. If we did not flow into the pipe at a certain rate, we'd wind up with a thick sticky oil flowing slowly against the pipe wall and a warmer core flowing inside it, but that increased pressure and reduced flow a lot. It was a problem if flow stopped. The oil would cool and become almost solid, effectively plugging the pipeline. Since the pipeline was not heat traced, to prevent that, we started looking at various mixes of the diluent, which were from the western Venezuela oil fields where the crude was much lighter then the Orinoco's. I found a hi-diluent mix that improved the low temperature flow, but it reduced the net oil export flow too much. Reducing the dil quantity, increased the pressure needed to start and run the pipeline. I had to balance net oil export quantity, dilbit pipeline operating temperature, startup pressure, pump power, flow rate, diameter and construction costs for both pipelines. Another consideration came to light. The soil heat capacity changed with the seasons. Rainy weather in "winter", increased the soil's heat capacity and upset the thermodynammic equilibrium, which moved the pipeline opeation off the design flowrate, pressure and power settings.

Eventually I had to increase pipeline pressure to move the selected mixture, but that was only needed during startup. After a week of hot oil flowing in the pipeline at very slow rates, the soil around it would begin to reach equilibrium and the flowrate would start rising. The pressure required would also start dropping to about half of startup needs. We would have to add flow control and power reduction ability to keep net oil flowrates from exceeding production capacity. That also affected pump selection. Could we find a pump that could give us less than half flow at very high pressures and design flow at design preessure. We did when I found that configuring the pumps to run in both series and parallel. That worked perfectly. We would operate in series mode for one week, until flow rates started rising and pressures started dropping, then we would switch to paralled flow, double the flow rate and reduce pressure to half. It would then take 30 days to reach the ultimate flow rate. No VFDs needed, even for such a wide variation of conditions. We could still operate very close to the pump's best efficiency points as well. I still have extreme suspicions about the need for VFDs to this day. I can usually find a way to get rid of them. There is only one typical case scenario where I actually found VFDs more or less useful, but it was for irrigation use and definitely not involving pumping from a well to the surface.

Link to Google Earth KMZ for the Petrozuata Venezuela Extra Heavy Oil Project (Conocol and Maraven in 1997) Don't know who is running it today, if its still there at all.



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[LittleInch]

Well that's fascinating for me at least!

I had something like that for the waxy crude line in Sudan. The advantage there was the ground temperature was very high, but the key was keeping it moving. I did a transient heat up study for start up and discovered the ground heated up to more or less steady state in about 2 days as it was also uninsulated. We had a rather strange and unproven design to move some fluid back and forth (Yo-Yo) to maintain some level of shear in the fluid to prevent it gelling if the line stopped for >6 hours. No idea it it would work but that idea cam from the client so we went with it....

I think you're right on the VFDs for a fair number of the applications they are used for. It's too easy to pluck it out at concept stage and say it will cure all ills.



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Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

 

[1503-44]

Guess I felt like writing today.

Especially with pipelines when you need some partial flow capability and reliability anyway. With more than one or two pumps, there's a lot of flow rate turndown that you can do within efficient ranges. With four pumps you can be near enough BEP to do 1:5 and not be able to pay for a VFD with any savings. With one pump, no reliability or availability requirements, but you need a rull flow range and P varies with Q^2, or electric only drive specified, OK, VFD 24/7. IC engines make for a poor man's VFD anyway. More fuel, more speed. Its not often that we don't have fuel available at the suction flange.

Back and forth hey? Between North and South Sudan no doubt.

At least the waxy oil is lighter, but it does get solid when it cools. As you know, for Kenya we didn't look at if it could be pumped out at twice the pressure, and it was already a high pressure line anyway, but I doubt it was possible. There was "some presupposition" that the pipeline would have to be heat traced, like the India pipeline, so that was never looked at as far as I know.

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[byrdj]

local news (raleigh, nc)
Friday could be the most difficult day yet to find gas – around 72% of NC gas stations were out of gas.

 

[waross]

Does anyone know if the XL line included a diluent return line? I don't think so. but I don't know for sure.

Bill
--------------------
Ohm's law
Not just a good idea;
It's the LAW!

 

[1503-44]

I have never heard of any return line associated with XL or Keystone. If there is a continuous stream of diluent oil available in the production area, there would be no need to loop back the diluent to the field. In Venezuela, the diluent was in the Lake Maricaibo area and Orinoco is a long distance away. It was cheaper to build the diluent loop, fill it once, and have an upgrader, than to arrange for a continuous supply of diluent at the oilfield. All the Orinoco oil is on the very heavy side. And there is a lot of it. More oil than in Saudi. There were some experiments done with making an emmulsion with water and exporting that to burn in oil-electric generators, but nobody liked it much. It was very messy and hard to deal with the water. I don't think it ever caught on, hence the switch to diluent based transport.

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[1503-44]

$5 Million ransom paid.. Only

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[dik]

and more....

https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/...as-us-urges-critical-infrastructure-operators

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik

 

[1503-44]

Its not so much the hackers. If you leave money on the table, we know that its pretty much going to disappear one way or another. So we don't knowingly leave money on the table.

This is the real problem. WE KNOW NOT TO LEAVE MONEY ON THE TABLE and we expect our software not do it either. How can we tell when they sell us an insecure application? Most of the time, they seem not to know either and if they do, they don't care, or don't want to tell us. So we have to cover their A$$ and encrypt our data before someone else does. That does not seem like the solution to the problem. Its a band aid for the developer's A$$. Should developers be forced to shoulder the responsibility for their crap insecure software?

Shift right: Developers knowingly release insecure applications, says report

https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/...gly-release-insecure-applications-says-report

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[davidbeach]

Just keep the intruder’s hands off of it. App security is important, but if nobody can get to it it will be more secure than anything an adversary has unlimited time to study.

I’ll see your silver lining and raise you two black clouds. - Protection Operations

 

[1503-44]

It makes it harder to use when you have to keep it locked up. Do you buy a car to keep it hidden away in the garage?
Is there some reason you are presenting that strategy? I'm not especially interested in a work around for bad software.

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[cranky108]

Simple, disconnect your operating systems from the web.

Concerns here reach all the way to wireless mouse concerns.

 

[1503-44]

Colonial Pipeline announced that that one of its main lines, Line 4, which runs from Greensboro, North Carolina, to Woodbine, Maryland, is operating under manual control for a limited period of time while existing inventory is available. The company is developing a plan to restart Lines 1, 2 and 3.

“As previously announced, while our main lines continue to be offline, some smaller lateral lines between terminals and delivery points are now operational as well,” the May 10 company statement said. “We continue to evaluate product inventory in storage tanks at our facilities and others along our system and are working with our shippers to move this product to terminals for local delivery.”

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[FacEngrPE]

Should you want to find the pipelines near you, see the National Pipeline Mapping System Public Viewer
It's a bit cumbersome to use, as the map only displays pipelines, one county at a time,

 

[waross]

I am wondering;
Did the hack affect the physical control of the pipeline. or was it directed at the accounting servers so that revenue information of the volume of fuel delivered and/or billing for deliveries was compromised?

Bill
--------------------
Ohm's law
Not just a good idea;
It's the LAW!

 

[1503-44]

They have not admitted that ops were affected. Their restart plan suggests otherwise.

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[NOLAscience]

Should you want to find the pipelines near you, see the National Pipeline Mapping System Public Viewer
It's a bit cumbersome to use, as the map only displays pipelines, one county at a time,

It's even more cumbersome than that, as only the states Alabama through Hawaii are available on the drop-down menu. I tried in Google Chrome and in Edge. Any advice?

 

[1503-44]

Its messed up. Click on the drop down box, then use your arrow key to scroll down to Wyoming.


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