Monomère Producteur, a US subsidiary of the French chemical conglomerate
Laurent Chimiques, announced today that it was declaring force majeure on all
of its contracts for the delivery of acrylamide in North America. It’s Delano,
GA facility is the largest manufacturer of acrylamide monomer in the US and it
was recently hit by a cyberattack on its monomer storage tanks.
The company’s President Charles Moureu told reporters today
announced that its four 50,000 gallon acrylamide storage tanks had become
contaminated with unacceptable levels of polyacrylamide because the air sparge
of the tanks had been shut down by a cyber criminal over the Fourth of July
weekend.
“The air sparge of the acrylamide storage tanks prevents
polymerization of the monomer in the tanks,” Moureu told reporters; “With the
high heat levels we have been seeing this summer and the lack of air sparge we
have found that there is three to five percent polymer in the monomer storage
tanks. This level of polymer makes the product unsuitable for use by our customers.”
The Federal Bureau of Inquiry and the ECS-CERT have been
conducting a joint investigation of the attack on the Delano chemical facility.
When contacted by the company, ECS-CERT investigators quickly discovered a
small USB drive in one of the devices in a control system cabinet in the tank
farm. Immanuel C. Securitage from ECS-CERT told reporters that the USB device
was similar to those used to connect wireless keyboards and mice to home
computers.
“It provided a Bluetooth connection to a wireless modem that
was hidden near the cabinet,” Securitage said; “That provided the access the
attackers needed to bypass all of the network security controls put in place by
the company and take control of the safety systems that controlled the air
sparge and tank monitoring controls for the four large storage tanks.”
Johnathan Quest, spokesman for the FBI, told reporters that
the device was placed in the cabinet during an apparent physical attack on the
facility during the evening of July 3rd. “A perimeter intruder
detection system alarmed at 10:00 pm that evening and local police responded but
found no sign of intruders that night,” Quest said: “A more detailed inspection
the next morning found a rope strung above the fence between two trees that
served as the intruders route into and out of the facility.”
The Agency for Chemical and Environmental Security spokesman
Daniel Varg told reporters that the largest volume use of acrylamide monomer in
the United States is in the manufacture of water treating polymer products used
in both the cleaning of drinking water and the treatment of municipal and industrial
waste water.
“The removal of almost 180,000 gallons of acrylamide from
the market place is going to have a rapid impact on the water treatment market,”
Varg told reporters; “We expect to see shortages start appear in the invert emulsion
polymer market place within the next couple of weeks. Depending on how long it
takes Monomère Producteur to clean up the material in those tanks we could start
to see treatment plants shutting down before the end of the month.”
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