Colonial Pipeline shut down a portion of its lines supplying jet fuel, diesel fuel, heating fuel and gas to the east coast amid a data ransomeware hack demanding money.   While only one of their pipelines is devoted to gas, filling stations report being empty already.   The company is owned by the Koch Industry, South Korea government thru a nationalized pension fund, a Crown Corporation, Industry Funds Management – US, and Shell, a Norwegian company.   That being said, a pipeline that is essential for the oil and gas provisions of the east coast is predominantly owned by the UK, South Korea and Koch Brothers. It has had 272 infractions since 2000.  

Currently, the entire website for Colonial is down – although they assure everyone it is unrelated to the malware hack!   Coincidences.

Industry Funds Management:   would also seem to have had their website taken down.

Although the hack occurred nearly a week ago, there appears to be no progress, no discussions with the CISA or FBI to ask for help to remedy the situation despite the fact that a state of emergency has been declared for all states involved.   Gas lines and gas prices have already begun their climb while Biden is asking for oil shipments from Europe to supplement.   Odd given the number of fracking operations he shut down right here.

Colonial owns 15 tank farms which are required to hold a 45 day surplus of fuel.   For some unknown reason, those storage facilities remain untapped.   It takes 14-24 days for a single batch or oil to move through the pipelines to their destination.   Meaning the pipelines – are now full and idle.

Why Biden would request delivery of oil from Europe instead of Canada or Mexico our closest neighbors is puzzling.   Typically delivery from Europe would be quite expensive and take upwards of a ten days to a month for diversion at a premium price.   If fracking had not been shut down there would be no problem.  

Lines reminiscent of the Carter administration will likely develop quickly.   President Carter declared an oil shortage which quickly led to fear and long lines as people stored oil.   Yet a Washington Post expose in 1979 revealed that the crisis was actually a – fraud.   The purpose of the Carter Big Lie was to artificially rake prices higher given a glut had accumulated. As a result, the price of crude rose 50% within less than a year and had more than doubled by 1980.

Raising oil prices has been on the forefront of the Biden Administration!

Charles Koch one of the Colonial owners, the remaining Koch industry behemoth, is currently worth in the neighborhood of $65-$70 billion.   While declaring himself Libertarian, he has aligned with such liberal notables as: Brennan’s Center For American Progress, the ACLU, MacArthur Foundation, and even – Soros Open Society.   He has aligned with Michael Bloomberg on numerous ventures as well.  All of which make his ‘choices’ somewhat suspect.

Is it possible that the Colonial Pipeline ‘Hack’ is actually fake?   Why wouldn’t Colonial’s Executive Team have immediately requested CISA and FBI assistance?   Simply deferring to the fact that they are a private company should be of no consequence given the disruption is a massive public emergency.   But then if the hack was a fake, they would not need any help – would they?

And like President Carter, the purpose is to exponentially raise the price of gasoline across the country as other companies divert to cover the east coast shortages.   Such a diversion would trickle throughout creating shortages elsewhere and a possible doubling of the price of gas at the pump.

The White House has declared that the ransomware attack came from a newly created hacking group, DarkSide.   Apparently this group made themselves known just a year ago, although no actual hack has been declared to be of their volition until – today!   The only historical mention of this group was by Forbes.

Brett Callow, a cybersecurity analyst stated, “Remediation and recovery is not necessarily a quick and easy process, and while essential functionality can be restored more quickly, it can take organizations weeks or even months to fully return to normal operations.”   Colonial has said they should be restored by the end of this week.

However, it is not clear what data was attacked and why it would require shutting down the pipelines at all! In addition, it would appear that some news outlets claim Colonial shut down ALL pipelines, others state that only 2 were shutdown.   Different stories fuel the notion that everything is not straight in Colonialville.   Adding to the curious notion that a group which has not had any presence before is responsible – a lack of information from Colonial’s CEO – and the obscure reason they would not request assistance.

According to a Forbes article, DarkSide announced themselves via the Dark Web.   Their ransomware hacking states that if their financial blackmail is not fulfilled, they will make their data public.   Typically that would involve something confidential such a product in development and secret from competitors, or persons involved in the Dark Web, or legal documents, or persons identities.

It is unknown what data they hold in ransom.

However, it is highly likely that DarkSide would be based in Ukraine as opposed to Russia given previous analytics performed by McAfee on cyber criminals including GandCrab, Sodinokibi, and REvil.