Last month, Rep Rush (D,IL) introduced HR 6084,
the Energy Product Reliability Act. The bill would require the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission (FERC) to establish an Energy Product Reliability
Organization that would to for energy pipelines what NERC has done for the national
electric grid. No funding is authorized by this bill.
Rust is a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee
to which this bill was assigned for consideration. This means that there should
be sufficient influence to see this bill considered in Committee. I suspect
that there would be substantial opposition to this bill from Republicans that generally
resist comprehensive regulatory requirements such as those foreseen by this
legislation. The bill could pass out of Committee because of Democratic control
I doubt that this bill would make it to the floor of the
House because of opposition from two different Committee Chairs, the Homeland
Security Committee and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. The new
authority for EPRO’s would cut into their separate influence over cybersecurity
and pipeline security respectively.
Commentary
The requirement for the EPRO to consult with TSA And DOE on
cybersecurity standards is more than a little odd. The DOE’s Office of Cybersecurity,
Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER), certainly retains the preeminent
government authority (the knowledge based definition of that term) on energy
cybersecurity, TSA retains the regulatory authority to oversee security
(including, by default, cybersecurity). Thus the ‘consult with’ requirement of
§2(e)(4) should probably be changed to a ‘coordinate with’ mandate, unless the
legislation were to remove TSA responsibility for security oversight of energy
pipelines. Of course, that is not likely to happen (see paragraph immediately
above).
TSA has been working with the pipeline industry on voluntary
physical security standards for quite some time and CESER also has a background
in physical pipeline security processes. Thus, it would certainly be
appropriate, at a minimum, to change that paragraph to read:
(4) CONSULTATION.—The Energy
Product Reliability Organization shall consult with the Administrator of the
Transportation Security Administration and the Secretary of Energy in
developing energy product reliability standards relating to cybersecurity
for energy pipelines.
For more details about the provisions of this bill, see my
article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-6084-introduced
- subscription required.
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