Accidents in the Energy Sector and Energy Infrastructure Attacks in the context of Energy Security

Wir schaffen Wissen – heute für morgen
Paul Scherrer Institut
Peter Burgherr (PSI) & Jennifer Giroux (ETHZ)
Accidents in the energy sector and energy infrastructure attacks
in the context of energy security
CP Expo 2013
29 – 31 October 2013
CP Expo, 29 – 31 October 2013, Genova, Italy

Content
• Comparative Risk Assessment in the Energy Sector
 Energy-related Severe Accident Database (ENSAD) [PSI]
• NaTech Accidents affecting Energy Infrastructures
 ENSAD [PSI]
• Intentional Attacks on Energy Infrastructures
 Energy Infrastructure Attack Database (EIAD) [ETHZ-CSS / PSI]
• Terrorism Risk for Energy Installations
 Probabilistic tool for site-specific assessment [PSI]
• Conclusions

Burgherr & Giroux: Accidents and Intentional Attacks in the Energy Sector

Comparative Risk Assessment in the Energy Sector



Background
• Comparative assessment of accident risks is a central aspect in a
comprehensive evaluation of the performance of energy technologies
(Fritzsche 1989; Inhaber 2004; Rasmussen 1981)
• In the past 40 years catastrophic accidents affected the entire energy-related
business and industry (Sutton, 2012)
• Society is often risk averse towards low-probability high-consequence events,
but at the same time a lack of urgency can be observed among the public and
decision makers (Garrick, 2008)
• No adequate treatment of energy accidents in terms of completeness and data
quality (Fritsche, 1992)
To close this gap, the PSI initiated in the early 1990s
a long-term research activity, at the core of which is the
ENergy-related Severe Accident Database (ENSAD)


Overview of Accidents in the Energy Sector
Coal mine explosion

Deepwater Horizon (USA)

Fire/explosion at LNG
facility (Algeria)

LPG explosion
Refinery fire/explosion

Dam failure

Prestige, Galicia (Spain)

Biodiesel plant explosion

Lightning struck
oil storage tank
Explosion of tapped gasoline
pipeline, Nigeria
Gas pipeline explosion

Silane explosion
In PV plant
Induced seismicity
at geothermal well

Wind turbine collapse

Kocaeli earthquake (Tur),
fire at refinery


Approach for Comparative Risk Assessment
• Full energy chains because accidents can
occur at all stages

Burgherr et al. 2013

• Evaluation period: ENSAD contains accident
data for more than four decades  1970–2008
(2012/13)


• Data normalization to ensure comparison
across different energy chains  GWeyr
• Regional aggregation at different spatial scales
 individual countries, country groups (OECD,
EU, non-OECD, globally)

Severe Accident Definition and Consequence Indicators
Risk
description

Impact Category

ENSAD severity
threshold

Consequence indicator

Human health

Fatalities
Injuries

≥5
≥ 10

Fatalities per GWeyr
Injured per GWeyr

Societal

Evacuees
Food consumption ban

≥ 200
yes

Evacuees per GWeyr
Nominal scale

Environmental Release of hydrocarbons
Land/water contamination

≥ 10’000 t
≥ 25 km2

Tonne per GWeyr
km2 per GWeyr

Economic

≥ 5 Mio USD (2000) USD per GWeyr

Economic loss



Historical Development of ENSAD



Geographic Distribution of Severe Accidents (1970-2008)

Nigeria

Burgherr et al., 2010

• Top 10 countries accounted for 83% of all fatalities; countries with 100 to 1000 cumulated fatalities
contributed another 15.1%, and remaining countries summed up to only 1.9%.
• China: 53343 fatalities; 25772 in coal mine accidents (mostly Shanxi, Henan, Guizhou, Heilongjiang
and Hunan); 26000 in Banqiao/Shimantan dam failure (Henan).
• Nigeria: oil chain accounts for over 98% of fatalities; Delta, Lagos, Rivers, Osun and Abia states.
• USA: most fatalities in the Gulf of Mexico area (e.g. LA, TX), where O&G activities are concentrated.


Fatality Rates & Maximum Consequences (1970-2008)



NaTech Accidents affecting Energy Infrastructures



NaTech Accidents Background
What are NaTech accidents?
 Accidents triggered by natural hazard
(Showalter & Myers, 1994; Steinberg & Cruz, 2004; Krausmann et al., 2011)

Why look at NaTech accidents?
 Risk of such accidents is expected to increase in the future due to
- growing industrialization
- change of natural hazard occurrence patterns by climate change
- increasing vulnerability of the society
(Girgin & Krausmann, 2013)

How can NaTech accidents be analyzed?
 Qualitative risk screening (Cruz & Okada, 2008)
 Index method ranking natech hazards (Sabatini et al., 2008)
 Qualitative screening using Multi-Criteria Decision Model (Busini et al., 2011)
 Quantitative assessment (Antonioni et al., 2007)  ENSAD


NaTech Accidents in ENSAD
• 398 NaTech accidents in ENSAD (1970-2008), mostly fossil energy chains.
• In the coal chain out of 95 accidents 83 occurred in China, and of these 69 were severe(≥5
fatalities)
• In the oil and natural gas chains 246 and 37 Natech accidents were recorded, with most of them
located in the USA (115 and 24).
• Flooding, windstorm and lightning were the most common triggering events, followed by
earthquake and landslide.

• Highest frequencies in Coal China.
• OECD countries exhibit lower
frequencies and smaller maximum
consequences than non-OECD.
• However, currently available
ENSAD data are rather limited.
• Key research focus in currently
ongoing database update.



Intentional Attacks on Energy Infrastructures



Energy Infrastructure Attack Database (EIAD)
• Focus on violent non-state actors (VNSA)
• Covers all forms of non-state violence aimed at energy infrastructure
- all human (energy sector personnel)
- physical (energy sector physical assets)
- information (energy sector cyber systems supporting operations)

• EIAD does not code for motivation but rather for
- attack type (e.g., assassination, assault, bombing, etc.)
- instrument used (e.g., firearms, explosive-dynamite, arson/firebombing, etc.).

• All information in EIAD is from open-source information sources
• EIAD incident record structure:
- Unique ID
- Date (including extended incidents such as hijacking and kidnappings)
- Location (desriptive and geo-coded information)
- Information (summary, event type, and whether event was part of a multiple attack)
- Attack Information (attack type, instruments used, combination attack, second attack type)
- Target Information (specific target, energy sector, energy infrastructure, second target)
- Perpetrator Information (individual/group, group type)
- Incident Consequences (casualties and fatalities, reported downtime, infrastructure impact, hostage information)
- Additional Information
- Source Information (media reports, social media, cross-reference to other databases, etc.)


Summary of EIAD Content
•

Currently EIAD contains 8602 records for the
years 1980-2011.

•

Significant increase over time.

•

Vast majority of attacks classified as
successful (8211)

•

Most attacks directed to “linear” targets that
are difficult to protect (50% electricity
transmission lines and substations, oil
pipelines (15%), oil transports by road tanker
and natural gas pipelines (each 7%).

•

Almost 40% (3413) of EI attacks were
considered multiple attacks. Multiplicity within
a specific country points to the power of
‘tactical contagion’ and the ‘criminal microcycles’ within certain contexts, contributing to
the development of spatio-temporal “waves”
or hotspots.


Burgherr & Giroux 2013


EI attacks by attack type
•

80.4% of attacks were carried out with some
type of bombing device.

•

Several other attack types with more than 100
events cumulatively amount to 15.0%.

•

Notable that also 4.1% could not be assigned
due to incomplete information.



Spatial distribution of EI Attacks by Country


•

Top 3 countries are Colombia (1381 EI attacks), Iraq (1085) and Pakistan (1009), totaling 49.7%.

•

More than 200 attacks: El Salvador, Peru, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Chile (25.7%).

•

More than 100 attacks: India, Angola, Philippines, Thailand, Russia (11.8%).

•

More than 50 attacks: Spain, Turkey, Yemen, Guatemala (3.8).

•

Remaining 69 countries 8.9%; roughly two thirds of them 0.1% or less.


Temporal Patterns in Top 3 Countries





Comparison EI Attacks and Accidents

•

Country-specific patterns for severe (≥5 fatalities) and smaller (1-4 fatalities) accidents and EI
attacks.

•

Maximum consequences of accidental events are generally higher than for EI attacks.

•

Caution: in the case of Nigeria and Pakistan EIAD data might not be complete for EI attacks
 ongoing updates.


Terrorism Risk for Energy Installations



Terrorist Threat Analysis (EU Project SECURE)

• First-of-its-kind analyses of terrorist threat by
means of scenario quantification for selected
energy infrastructure.
• In spite of large uncertainties the analysis indicates
that the frequency of a successful terrorist attack
with very large consequences is of the same order
of magnitude as can be expected for a disastrous
accident in the respective energy chain.
• This is primarily due to the fact that centralized
large energy installations are hard targets and
relatively easy to protect, requiring sophisticated
attack scenarios to cause significant damage and
lasting impacts.

1.E+02
1.E+01
1.E+00
1.E-01
1.E-02
1.E-03
1.E-04
1.E-05
1.E-06

China
USA
Europe

EPR
LMR
HTR
(Gen III) (Gen IV) (Gen IV)

Dam

Refinery

LNG

Nuclear

Hydro

Oil

Gas

Eckle et al., 2011

Risk per installation per year

Risk of fatalities through terrorism total


Conclusions
•
•
•

Evaluations are based on quantitative data from the databases ENSAD and EIAD.

•

The severity distribution for accidents generally exhibits a fat-tail, with lowprobability high-consequence events being an important factor of energy chain
performance.

•

For intentional attacks severe consequences are less an issue because energy
infrastructures are often targeted in remote areas and difficult to protect (e.g.
pipelines and transmission lines), but when frequently attacked can result in
substantial business and supply disruptions.

•

The joint analysis of accidents and intentional attacks provides a comprehensive
and complementary approach on two types of risks that have rather different
properties, but are essential in a holistic energy security perspective.

Accidents are typically rare and independent events.
Intentional attacks are often multiple events and concentrated both in time and
space, resulting in distinct hotspots.



Thank you for your attention!

Laboratory for Energy Systems Analysis
http://www.psi.ch/gabe
peter.burgherr@psi.ch


Accidents in the Energy Sector and Energy Infrastructure Attacks in the context of Energy Security

Empfohlen

Empfohlen

Weitere ähnliche Inhalte

Ähnlich wie Accidents in the Energy Sector and Energy Infrastructure Attacks in the context of Energy Security

Ähnlich wie Accidents in the Energy Sector and Energy Infrastructure Attacks in the context of Energy Security (20)

Mehr von Community Protection Forum

Mehr von Community Protection Forum (20)

Kürzlich hochgeladen

Kürzlich hochgeladen (20)

Accidents in the Energy Sector and Energy Infrastructure Attacks in the context of Energy Security