Oil Cos. Lack National Y2K Plan Full Coverage Year 2000 Problem By JIM ABRAMS Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - The oil and gas industry, with its dependence on computers, has too many question marks about its plans to deal with Year 2000 computer problems, a congressional report concludes. The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said while individual companies are confronting possible problems, no national-level approach has emerged to deal with shortages or disruptions in the nation's oil and gas supplies. ``The oil and gas industry is highly automated, and the task to remediate all critical systems is enormous,'' said Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, who requested the report and who chairs a special Senate panel on the Y2K problem with vice chairman Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn. ``It appears they started too late.''

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Let's see, the energy business started too late, so you better have an extra can of pork & beans and a tin of sardines in your pantry.

If there's any panic out there it'll be because the most powerful country in the world has elected and appointed a bunch of idiots (or malefactors, take your pick) to manage the government.

Which is it? Did the energy industry start too late or is this a problem worth no more than a can of sardines? Both cannot be true.

-- Puddintame (achillesg@hotmail.com), May 24, 1999

Answers

I posted this on another thread but it seems pertinent here as well...

If a lot is to be made of Senator Bennett's assertion that he's somewhat more optimistic than he was a year ago it'd be good to recall what he was saying a year ago. Here are clips from comments he made mid-1998:

The Y2K Crisis: A Global Ticking Time Bomb?, by Senator Bob Bennett, June 2, 1998. "What's going to happen in your organization when you cannot transfer money into any of those branch offices or get any money out of any of the operations that are going on there because the banking systems in those countries will not be working? ... What's going to happen in your internal organization when many of your customers suddenly lose their jobs or lose their income because their organizations are not Y2K compliant, and they're facing serious layoffs?"

National Press Club Luncheon Address: Paul Revere Not Chicken Little, by Sen. Bob Bennett, July15, 1998. "I think the president's statement yesterday was a stirring call to arms. ... it's a little like announcing that we are at war. ... I believe we're going to win; that is I think that civilization as we know it is not going to come to an end. It's a possibility. Possibility, if Y2K were this weekend instead of 76 weekends from now, it would. But we have 76 weeks in which to try to get this under control. But we are, in a sense, at war against this problem."

Will the Health Care Industry Be Prepared for the Year 2000?, by Senator Bob Bennett, July 23, 1998. "Clearly, the health care industry is not yet ready for the Year 2000. If tonight when the clock struck midnight the calendar flipped to December 31, 1999, large portions of the health care system would fail. There are some six thousand American hospitals, 800,000 doctors, and 50,000 nursing homes, as well as hundreds of biomedical equipment manufacturers and suppliers of blood, pharmaceuticals, linens, bandages, etc., insurance payers, and others that are not yet prepared."

Opening Statement of Hearing: Communicating the Challenge of the Year 2000, by Sen. Bob Bennett, July 31, 1998. "... the sheer number of players illustrates the problem. Today in the United States, there are five long distance carriers ... , five major national television broadcasters, six Regional Bell Operating Companies, more than one thousand small phone companies, 16 communications satellite providers, more than 4500 Internet Service Providers and hundreds of cellular phone companies, thousands of broadcast radio stations and over eleven thousand cable services companies. And this just captures the infrastructure of the United States and does not include the thousands of large and small communications equipment manufacturers. ... this infrastructure relies on hundreds of millions of lines of computer code. It is too great a leap of faith to believe that all the elements of an endeavor this complex will be ready at the stroke of midnight just 17 months from today, especially in the light of the limited readiness the industry has shown to this committee."

Bunker Mentality Taking Hold in Fear of Y2K Glitch, by Karen Brandon, Chicago Tribune, August 3, 1998. "[Senator Bob Bennett] said he is worried about the prospect of riots, some ground-level weapons problems and payment for government programs such as Medicaid, Medicare and welfare. When asked if the cyber-survivalists should be considered wacky, Mary Jane Collipriest, Bennett's communications director, said no. When asked whether everyone else should begin taking similar steps, she replied, 'Not yet.'"

Somehow I can't get excited that he's 'somewhat' more optimistic than what he was saying back then.

-- Ron Rodgers (RonRodgers@Resilience2000.com), May 24, 1999.

Puddintame:

You are being un-American. We have the best congress money can buy. We have the best executive branch money can buy.

Professionals are working on it and CET says there is no real problem. If it were the case, he would have picked it up in his headphones.

Remediation and testing is a waste of time. The most unprepared municipality, Wahington DC, has not started yet and is only six months and several million dollars away from being y2k ready.

Montgomery County, MD, the most prepared municipality, has claimed to be four years into remediation and testing. They, as DC, are only six months and several million dollars away from being y2k ready.

So what is the big deal?

ABB says that vendor research and reporting is sufficient for the utilities, end to end testing takes too much time. Why can't the oil companies do the same as the utilities?

Why can't the Montgomery County Solution work for the oil companies?

All we have to do is wish really hard and think outside the box.

-- Tom Beckner (tbeckner@erols.com), May 24, 1999.

Yea guys. The saying "He don't know whether to shit and go blind or just close one eye and fart" comes to mind.

-- a (a@a.a), May 24, 1999.