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Al Qaeda Document Targets Energy Infrastructure On Land and Underwater

From the Telegraph

The document, written by al-Qaeda planner Younis al-Mauretani, suggests planting recruits in jobs which could later be useful in attacks, such as oil or gas transportation, and directing supporters to study chemistry and physics. [...]

 Al-Mauretani identifies the massive petrochemical facility at Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia as a potential target for aerial attack.

The 17-page document includes a suggestion that al-Qaeda should use submarines to explore the layout of underwater gas pipelines, in order to mine them. This idea is given serious consideration in the document which notes that the pipelines have safety valves every 6 miles that need to be taken into account when planting mines. 

 

 

Chavez, Venezuela, and the oil market

CNBC :

Gal Luft, co-director at the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security and a senior adviser to the U.S. Energy Security Council said that though a Chavez departure may already be well factored into prices, it won't "translate into market calmness before it is clear what the nature of the new leadership is."

Clarity over who will be running state-oil producer PDVSA will be equally important, Luft said. "The company has been battered by terribly ineffective personnel changes and removal of competent leadership which has been replaced by political appointees," he said. "Once we begin to see changes in the company's leadership, reflecting professionalism and competence, that could mean the company is making a U-turn, becoming attractive for investors."

Meanwhile, a former executive at PDVSA told CNBC that Venezuela has lost its ability to influence global oil markets because years of unde...

Bomb disables Iraq fuel oil pipeline

From Reuters, via the Lebanese Daily Star

Once again, terrorists have targeted the vulnerable energy sector. 

Attackers bombed and disabled a pipeline carrying fuel oil from Iraq's largest refinery to a province north of Baghdad, the oil ministry said on Sunday.

 "A bomb attack led to an explosion in the 16-inch pipeline transporting fuel oil from Baji refinery to Nineveh province," said ministry spokesman Asim Jihad.

US Administration’s Strategy to Mitigate the Theft of U.S. Trade Secrets

From  the White House  

Victoria Espinel, the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, announced the launch of a new strategy to protect intellectual property. She cited President Obama's State of the Union Address in which he said,  “we cannot look back years from now and wonder why we did nothing in the face of real threats to our security and our economy.”

The Strategy that we are releasing today coordinates and improves U.S. Government efforts to protect the innovation that drives the American economy and supports jobs in the United States. As the Strategy lays out, we are taking a whole of government approach to stop the theft of trade secrets by foreign competitors or foreign governments by any means – cyber or otherwise.

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