Security and Emergency Response
U.S. refiners and petrochemical manufacturers work diligently to protect their facilities and the people working in and around them in an ever-changing threat landscape. They apply a layered, fluid approach to security that includes regular communication with federal, state and local governments and strict adherence to regulations to protect our nation’s critical energy infrastructure.
Collaboration to Enhance Security
Collaboration across our industries and with trusted partners is critical to the continued success in maintaining secure operations. AFPM and our members maintain strong partnerships with the federal government and other groups in the chemical, oil and natural gas industries to identify potential threats, develop new protocols and further enhance our security systems to protect our nation’s critical infrastructure.
Working together, AFPM and our members participate in the following councils and working groups to share information and practices.
- Chemical Sector Coordinating Council: self-organized and self-governed council that enables critical infrastructure owners and operators, their trade associations and other industry representatives to interact on a wide range of sector-specific strategies, policies and activities to address the critical infrastructure security and resilience policies and efforts for the chemical sector.
- Industrial Control Systems Joint Working Group: industry and the Department of Homeland Security working group to facilitate information sharing, reduce the risk to the nation’s industrial control systems and continue and enhance the collaborative efforts of these systems. This group provides a vehicle for communicating and partnering across all critical infrastructure sectors between the federal agencies and departments, as well as private asset owners and operators of industrial control systems.
- National Maritime Security Advisory Committee: industry and government advisory committee that makes recommendations to the United States Coast Guard (USCG) on port security issues and to the Transportation Worker Identification Credentials (TWIC) Reader Workgroup to revise and improve the TWIC Reader Rule to enhance port and facility security.
- Oil and Natural Gas Subsector Coordinating Council: self-organized, self-governed body that facilitates collaboration among critical infrastructure owners, operators, trade associations and industry representatives. It focuses on sector-specific strategies, policies and activities to enhance the security and resilience of the oil and natural gas sectors.
- Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS) Security Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council Working Group: public and private sector advisory group that develops best practices and recommendations on mitigating risk to critical infrastructure posed by sUAS and makes recommendations to the federal government on actionable, reliable and scalable risk mitigation solutions for sUAS threats.
Cybersecurity in the Refining and Petrochemical Industries
The future of the refining and petrochemical industries relies on investing and maintaining a healthy cybersecurity system and having tools in place to monitor, detect, deter and recover from cyber-attacks.
Our members employ security programs that are risk-based, flexible and allow them to be responsive to threats. Comprehensive security measures are in place that cover both information technology and operational technology.
We also work closely with government agencies and other critical infrastructure groups to develop strategic plans that help to identify and eliminate cybersecurity disruptions. Many of our members’ sites are subject to the Maritime Transportation Security Act and Transportation Security Administration pipeline cyber security directives. They had previously also been subject to the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS); however, this effective program lapsed in 2023 and has yet to be reauthorized by Congress.
The Value of CFATS
The CFATS program is widely regarded as a smart regulation that helped to safeguard the country. It established a performance-based program for chemical facilities to protect against a variety of threats from terrorism to cyberattacks.
The program provided an avenue for the private sector to cooperate through a uniform, national chemical facility security program. It offered facility risk assessments, guidance to companies about their security plans and allowed facilities to vet personnel against the national terrorist screening database. When in use, it vetted more than 9,000 new personnel each month. Although the program expired in July 2023, AFPM and other industry trade groups continue to request that Congress reinstate this highly effective program.