How the US East Coast Lost Half It's Oil to 1 Hacker

this video is made possible by morningbrew start your day by catching up on the top news in business finance and tech in five minutes by subscribing with a link down in the description a few weeks ago something incredibly unusual happened in the united states this pipeline which transports roughly half of all the oil consumed on the u.s east coast was the successful target of a cyber attack by a group of hackers in russia for nearly a week the entire pipeline was shut down and the price of gas across dozens of u.s states skyrocketed to their highest prices seen in years as their main supply source was cut off people began hoarding gas in plastic bags flights were canceled or rescheduled while the company that operates the pipeline agreed to pay a ransom of 75 bitcoins to the hackers in order to get everything back to normal again it was all complete chaos so let's go over how this all happened half a century ago back in 1973 a similar event happened to americans that year opec an organization of mostly middle eastern oil producing countries decided to issue a complete oil embargo on the united states in response to american support for israel within five months of the embargo beginning the price of oil worldwide spiked by nearly 300 percent and it got so bad in america that the u.s government began to introduce nationwide fuel rations gas stations stopped selling any gas on sundays or saturday evenings while panic-induced horde buying made the situation even worse eventually 20 of all gas stations in the country ran completely out of fuel and americans were forced to endure hours-long lines every time they went up to fill up their cars for months around the time the embargo began america was importing roughly 50 of the oil they were consuming from abroad and after it ended richard nixon made a promise to make the united states completely energy independent by the end of the decade so that something like this would never happen again nixon's timing for american energy independence was a little optimistic though in reality it took more than 40 years to finally accomplish with the help of a booming fracking industry that accesses domestic shale oil and natural gas deposits along with more heavy reliance on green energy sources the united states is finally largely energy independent today which has kept energy prices low both at home and abroad but in a weird sort of twist america's quest to become energy independent left some parts of the country vulnerable in other ways over the last few years around half a dozen oil refineries across the u.s east coast have had to shut down their activities because they couldn't keep competing with the more advanced refineries along the gulf coast region which geographically benefit from their close proximity to the cheap and abundant oil and gas that's located across the state of texas in the 1960s construction began on the colonial pipeline the target of the cyber attack later on this year the pipeline begins in houston and transports oil and gas from texas through 13 states to the port of new york and new jersey and as more and more local refineries on the east coast shut down these states found themselves more and more reliant on the colonial pipeline for their oil and gas needs coming from texas which eventually made the colonial pipeline the single largest and most important pipeline in the entire united states today the pipeline can carry 3 million barrels of fuel every day between texas and new york and roughly 45 of all the oil consumed on the u.s east coast arrives through it the east coast's over-reliance on this single pipeline has caused problems before when hurricanes have hit the gulf coast in the past and forced refineries there to close it almost always causes gas prices on the east coast to also increase normally though that's not a huge problem because companies will store lots of extra fuel close by and a hurricane's disruptive impact on the supply chain is always temporary but the hack was much more disruptive than even a hurricane would have been because nobody exactly knew how long it was going to keep the pipeline that provides for half the east coast fuel closed it all started on the 6th of may when the russian hacking group calling itself darkseid breached the colonial pipeline servers and stole approximately 100 gigabytes of data initially nobody noticed this actually happening but on the following day darkside initiated a massive malware attack on the colonial pipeline itself the company that owns the pipeline freaked out and as a precaution to contain the hack from spreading they completely shut the entire pipeline down the following day on the 8th the colonial pipeline company couldn't confirm when the pipeline would resume its normal delivery functions panic on the east coast began to set in meanwhile the hackers were blackmailing the company with the 100 gigabytes of data they had stolen from them a couple days ago unless the company paid up a ransom of 75 bitcoins they would release all 100 gigabytes onto the internet so allegedly within hours of the hack and the shutdown taking place the company agreed to pay the ransom to the hackers in full this was a controversial decision colonial ceo would later go on to say in an interview that he made the call to pay the ransom because it was the right thing to do for the country after making the bitcoin payment darkseid sent over a decryption tool for them to get everything back online but it proved to be brutally slow by the end of the ninth two days after the pipeline shut down colonial was saying that they planned to restore the pipeline's operations by the end of the week but that hardly did anything to stop the panic that was now sweeping across the southeastern united states in response to fuel shortages american airlines temporarily changed their flight schedules out of charlotte and many flights had fuel stops tucked onto their journeys inconveniencing thousands of people on the ninth three days after the pipeline had shut down president joe biden declared a national state of emergency that removed limitations on the transport of fuel by road four days into the pipeline shutdown on the 10th fuel shortages at gas stations rapidly became apparent across alabama florida georgia south carolina and north carolina as panic buying really began to set in across these states nobody really knew if the pipeline was going to be opened up in a week or a month which is why you have the goofy photos and videos of people buying up all the gas they could in trash bags and hoarding them inside of their cars the area between northern south carolina and southern virginia was the hardest hit in the country 71 of all the gas stations in the charlotte metropolitan area were out of fuel by the 11th just four days after the pipeline shut down by the 14th 87 of the gas stations in washington dc were also totally out so as a result average fuel prices in the united states skyrocketed to over three dollars a gallon their highest level seen in nearly seven years since 2014 but the massive hoarding and panic buying made the situation much worse than it would have been otherwise on the 12th u.s transportation secretary pete bootage even told people to stop putting gasoline into plastic bags i will say that this is a time to be sensible and to be safe of course we understand the concern in areas where people are encountering temporary supply disruptions but hoarding does not make things better and under no circumstances should gasoline ever be put into anything but a vehicle directly or an approved container but it was on this exact day later on at 5 pm the colonial announced the restarting of the pipeline's operations ending a six day total shutdown of the pipeline's activities but it took several more days for operations to return fully back to normal you see oil and gas travels through the colonial pipeline very slowly anywhere between 3 and 5 miles per hour on average this means that it takes fuel about 18 and a half days to move from houston to new york by the 18th of may 11 days after the shutdown and six days after the pipeline came back online about 10 600 gas stations across the southeastern united states were still left without any fuel in the end it wasn't any kind of turmoil in the middle east or inadequate american energy production which led to the week-long gas crisis it was merely a small group of hackers and the collective panic of americans themselves darkseid themselves even felt pretty bad about the whole thing they released this public statement espousing their apolitical nature and that their goal was only to make some money not to create any problems for society a lot of what's happening today is based on what happened yesterday or last week the fuel shortages in the southeast are just now starting to end and as a resident who lives in the southeast these events were directly impacting my daily life i went to go fill up my car one day and was shocked to see that it cost me over 50 dollars when it's usually hardly even 30. i wanted to understand why and so i began keeping up with the events by reading the frequent short articles that were being posted to morning brew every morning this is why i really love using morningbrew because their free daily newsletter gets you up to speed on the news you need to know in business finance and tech in just five minutes and in a way that's way more witty relevant and informative than traditional news is for example while i was writing this script that was inspired from their previous articles on the colonial pipeline hack i also got to read about the plane that belarus's dictator forced to land in order to arrest a journalist on board the ongoing trial between epic games and apple and the surging air travel anticipating the european union's reopening announcements since you watch real life lore i know that you like getting a bit smarter and staying better informed and regular repeatable patterns of learning are exactly the best way to do that so go ahead and start your mornings with morning brew by subscribing completely for free when using the link down below in the description it's one of the best ways you can help support this channel for free and you get to stay up to date with fantastic articles on current events it's seriously a win-win and as always thank you so much for watching

Channel: RealLifeLore

Views: 866,449

Keywords: real life lore, real life lore maps, real life lore geography, real life maps, world map, world map is wrong, world map with countries, world map real size, map of the world, world geography, geography, geography (field of study), facts you didn’t know, colonial pipeline, hack, cyber crime, cyber attack, pipeline, oil pipeline, america, east coast, oil, gas, darkside

Id: rBPud5PyySk

Length: 11min 4sec (664 seconds)

Published: Sat May 29 2021