Natural Gas News – February 19, 2020
US natural gas operator shuts down for 2 days after being infected by ransomware
Ars Technica: A US-based natural gas facility shut down operations for two days after sustaining a ransomware infection that prevented personnel from receiving crucial realtime operational data from control and communication equipment, the Department of Homeland Security said on Tuesday. Tuesday’s advisory from the DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, didn’t identify the site except to say that it was a natural gas-compression facility. Such sites typically
use turbines, motors, and engines to compress natural gas so it can be safely moved through pipelines. The attack started with a malicious link in a phishing email that allowed attackers to pivot from the facility’s IT network to the facility’s OT network, which is the operational technology hub of servers that control and monitor
physical processes of the facility. With that, both the IT and OT networks were infected with what the advisory described as “commodity ransomware.” For more on this story visit arstechnica.com or click https://bit.ly/2V49a2B
Natural-gas prices tally biggest one-day gain in over a year, post highest finish in a month
MarketWatch reports: Natural-gas futures jumped by nearly 8% on Tuesday, with forecasts for colder weather in much of the U.S. lifting prices to their highest finish in
roughly four weeks. Oil futures, meanwhile, settled flat as traders weighed worries about the coronavirus and its impact on energy demand, along with a forecast for a slowdown in U.S. shale oil output. The move for natural gas appears to be “a reaction to a much colder forecast for the western half of the country through next week, even though the key Midwest and Northeast consuming regions are forecast above average,” Marshall Steeves, energy markets analyst at IHS Markit, told MarketWatch. “Thus, the gains could prove precarious.” March natural gas NGH20, – 0.56% climbed by 14.4 cents, or 7.8%, to settle at $1.981 per million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. For more on this story visit marketwatch.com or click https://on.mktw.net/2V5K2sc
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