Daniel Varg, the spokesman for Agency for Chemical and
Environmental Security (ACES) announced at a news conference today that last
week’s explosion and fire was apparently due to a deliberate cyber attack on
the control systems at the Blew Bayou Chemical facility outside of Baton Rouge.
The plant produces acrylic acid, acrylamide and other associated polymers. Varg
reported that both the ECS-CERT and the Federal Bureau of Inquiry are now
participating in the ACES investigation.
Johnathan Quest, the FBI spokesman was asked why the agency
was not leading the investigation since it was now about a criminal act. He
noted that ACES investigators had been on-site for almost a week now and were
more familiar with the hazards associated with working around a chemical
incident of this sort. Immanuel C. Securitage from ECS-CERT added that his
agency had a recent history of working closely with both organizations and the
teams were working well together.
Varg reported that the ACES investigators had determined
that the initial explosion at the facility took place in one of the 50,000
gallon storage tanks in an enclosed tank farm building. The reason for the
explosion was that an exothermic reaction had taken place in the tank when
nitrogen had somehow been substituted for an air sparge in the tank. Daniel noted
that with the nitrogen displacing the dissolved oxygen in the tank the
inhibitor in the acrylic acid no longer functioned to stop the polymerization
reaction. The liquid expansion due to heat and polymerization caused the tank
to burst, damaging several adjacent acrylic acid tanks. The subsequent fire and
explosion in the storage tank building resulted when acrylic acid fumes were
ignited in an apparently improperly secured control panel.
Securitage explained that the cyber portion of the attack is
what caused the nitrogen sparge. Their investigators looking at the data
historian logs for the facility found that a number of valves had been opened
by an unknown attacker allowing nitrogen to be routed to the air sparge line
via an empty vessel in an adjacent part of the facility that had both types of
lines feeding the vessel.
When asked if this was the result of poor design, Varg told
reporters that there was check valve in the air line to that vessel, but it was
not functioning properly and was scheduled to be replaced before the plant
started operations after the holidays. IC Securitage told reporters that the
attacker would have had to have detailed knowledge about the facility
engineering to have determined what valves to open to achieve the nitrogen
sparge of the tank. He did note that there was evidence that an attacker had
been in the control system network for months before the attack happened.
Varg also reported that the explosion that caused the
injuries to the three responding fire fighters took place in an acrylamide
transfer line near where they were standing. There should not have been a
significant amount of acrylamide in that line, but it was full and that was
also probably a result of the cyber attack on the facility. As the line was
heated by the nearby fires the acrylamide started to polymerize and the
combined heat for the fire caused the water in the acrylamide to turn to steam
and rupture the line. All three fire fighters were expected to recover.
In a separate announcement earlier in the day, Issac B
Kaghun, a spokesman for Blew Bayou Chemical, reported that it would be months
before the company could resume shipment of acrylic acid from the facility. As
a result, the company was declaring force majeure on their acrylic acid
contracts. In light of today’s announcement by the FBI and Blew Bayou’s earlier
law suit against Parish Chemical, there may be objections to that claim.
In related news, Tianjin Chemical’s American subsidiary
China Water Treatment, announced that it currently had a surplus of acrylic
acid in its terminal in New Orleans and was looking to take on new customers.
Kaghun reportedly had unprintable comments about the offer at the end of today’s
news conference, noting that Tianjin was a disreputable supplier with numerous quality
control issues. He did acknowledge that even before last week’s incident, that
the domestic acrylic acid supply in this country was tight.
CAUTIONARY NOTE: This is a future news story –
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