Ten Dangerous Scenarios

Attack a nuclear plant

Cripple the
Transportation System

Destroy the
Fort Peck Dam

Detonate a suitcase bomb

Attack the Alaska pipeline

Contaminate a ventilation system

Cut off power to
a major city

Shoot down
Air Force One

Attack a chemical factory

Destroy a stadium

>> See the entire list <<

Scenario: Attack U.S. Oil Refineries

Scenario

Using guns or explosives, attack one or more U.S. oil refineries in an attempt to disrupt the nation's fuel supply.

Description

Each day, refineries in the United States process approximately 17 million barrels of crude oil [ref] to produce a variety of products essential to American life, including:

  • Gasoline
  • Diesel fuel
  • Jet fuel
  • Heating oil
  • Lubricating oils
  • Tar
  • Plastics feedstocks
Looking at this list, you can see how important refineries are to the U.S. economy. Our transportation infrastructure (cars, trucks, trains, airplanes) depends on the output of refineries, as do a number of other industries. This dependency makes refineries important terrorist targets.

Given our dependency, it is surprising how few refineries there are in the United States. According to this page: "One of our top priorities has to be increasing domestic refinery capacity," Burton said. "Our refineries are being pushed to the limit to meet demand. Twenty years ago, there were 231 refineries in this country. Today there are 155. Another refinery just shut its doors in the Chicago area this spring. With the massive capital costs involved, and the stringent regulations they have to follow, it just isn't economical to build refineries in the United States anymore." As mentioned in this statement, it is surprising how closely refinery output matches demand. Supply and demand are almost exactly identical.

Refineries also tend to concentrate in certain areas. Because most oil arrives in the U.S. by tanker, refineries tend to be located in coastal areas, and they tend to cluster together. According to this page, "The Gulf coast is home to a string of refineries stretching from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Pascagoula, Mississippi, which process more than 6 million barrels of crude oil a day and make up over a third of the nation's refining capacity."

Because there are so few refineries, because they cluster together, because they are so vital to the nation's economy, and because they are explosive, they make an inviting terrorist target. For example, by destroying just the 8 refineries, you eliminate 14% of the U.S. oil refining capacity. By looking at a page like this one, terrorists know that they can knock out approximately 40% of the refinery capacity in California with just three strikes: The BP refinery in Carson (255,000 barrels per day), the Chevron refinery in El Segundo (260,000 barrels per day), and the Chevron refinery in Richmond (225,000 barrels per day). By looking at a page like this one, you can find several large refineries in Louisiana like the Exxon refinery in Baton Rouge (483,000 barrels per day) and Citgo refinery in Lake Charles (307,000 barrels per day). By reading a page like this one, you learn about three large refineries in Houston: ExxonMobil Baytown (507,000 barrels per day), Citgo Houston (265,000 barrels per day) and Shell Deer Park (215,000 barrels per day).

By hitting just the two largest refineries, terrorists can eliminate 5% of the nation's capacity.

There are a number of ways to attack a refinery, including:

  • A truck bomb. A truck bomb like the one used by Timothy McVeigh driven into a refinery, or even parked on a road next to a refinery, could do enough damage to destroy a refinery.
  • Given the volatility and combustibility of the products produced in a refinery, chances are that much smaller bombs, and even grenades, could be effective.
  • A high-powered rifle shooting tracer bullets into the distilling towers or pipelines might be able to ignite and effectively destroy them. A gunman might take 10 to 20 shots and cripple a refinery.
  • A light aircraft flying over a refinery and dropping ten crude 20-pound bombs would do significant damage.
In other words, attacks can range between large and small to be effective.

Damage Potential

Radio Controlled Attack

As described in this scenario, R/C aircraft have become quite sophisticated in recent years. One way to attack a refinery would be to load a R/C airplane with 20 pounds of C-4 explosives and crash the plane into part of the refinery. An alternative would be to load 200 pounds of C-4 into a small two-passenger private airplane (or ultralight) and crash it into a refinery.

One way to block this this sort of aerial attack would be to clear the airspace for miles around any large refinery. Image/motion sensors could then scan the airspace and shoot down anything that moves.

When analysing the potential damage from a refinery strike, there are four things to look at:

  • The cost of repairing or replacing the refinery.
  • The cost of lost business while replacing the refinery. For example, a refinery that processes 400,000 barrels per day might produce $5 billion in products in a year.
  • The cost to the U.S. economy. By taking a refinery off-line, supplies will shrink so prices will go up.
  • The magnified cost of a national crisis if enough refinery capacity is destroyed. The September 11 bombings caused far greater economic damage in the form of airline layoffs and the loss of revenue in the travel industry than they did at the actual site of the bombings.
If terrorists could coordinate an attack and destroy 15% to 20% of the nation's refinery capacity, chances are that is enough to create a crisis that would last for up to a year. If 20% of refinery capacity remained idle for a year, that is something on the order of $50 billion in lost product sales. The crisis would cause the nation to resort to rationing, and rationing would have a huge effect on business by severely restricting travel and transportation.

Potential Solutions

Almost every part of our current fuel infrastructure is highly vulnerable to terrorist attack. Therefore, one possible solution is to move away from fossil fuels. For example, if we used hydrogen instead of fossil fuels to power vehicles, the production facilities would be far more distributed and our vulnerability to attack would be much lower. People could generate hydrogen individually in their homes if need be. So one possible solution would be to replace fossil fuels with a different energy technology that is far less vulnerable.

In the meantime, here are several possible ways to protect the refineries we have:

  • Deploy military guards around the perimeters of the nation's 50 largest refineries.
  • Invest in and build a number of smaller refineries in a variety of different locations to spread out the targets.
  • Avoid building mega-refineries, and avoid clustering refineries together.
  • Create excess refinery capacity so that several refinery strikes cannot tip the balance toward an energy crisis. If we had 10% to 20% excess refining capacity, several refinery attacks would have no effect on supplies.
  • Protect the 50 to 100 largest refineries in the same way we would protect nuclear plants. Closing roads near the refineries and placing hardened concrete barriers around the refineries will create a protected perimeter impermeable to car and truck bombs.
See this scenario for additional information.

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