The Fine Art Of Spindoctoring

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I'm not surprised to see Bloomberg two step on this one. They probably got quite a talking to regarding this article. I have seen this kind of crap before. Some of you may remember an article I posted way back when (6mos) a cyber dude was interviewed for a webzine and he talked about how "cool" it was to be working in Illinois nuke plants doing critical remediation work. That article was yanked from both the Webzine and Yahoo.

Shortly after I saw North's post this am about the article, an article appeared on Reuters' London feed saying exactly the opposite of this one. It's really quite sad. We're being fed a load of crap. I'm seeing a LOT of last minute systems work which is not working around the industry, esp w/ pipelines.

The portions of the Rueters' article are interspersed with those of the Bloomberg for informational purposes only: The Reuters' info is in [brackets]

Financial News Sun, 19 Dec 1999, 1:27pm EST

Arab Gulf Oil Producers May Not Be Prepared for Millennium Bug, UN Says By Sean Evers

Arab Gulf Oil Producers May Not Be Prepared for Millennium Bug

Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, Dec. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Gulf Arab states responsible for half the world's oil reserves may not be adequately prepared for the year 2000 computer problem, the United Nations and U.S. government officials said.

[ LONDON, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Key Middle Eastern oil exporters have made a late push to prepare themselves for the Y2K computer bug and now look to have potential energy supply problems under control, a United Nations expert said on Tuesday. ]

Computer failure and resulting disruption to production and transportation facilities in the six Arab Gulf states -- Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain -- could boost oil prices, which have already more than doubled this year.

Middle Eastern electricity, water and especially health systems are now more likely to suffer disruption than its strategic oil and gas sector said Mohammed Mrayati, technology adviser for the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) in Beirut.

Governments and companies in the Middle East won't be ready for the date changeover on Jan. 1, 2000, due to a lack of funding to deal with the ``millennium bug'' computer glitch, the United Nations has said in a report. The bug is a theoretical problem that may cause some computers to malfunction if they misread the two-digit date ``OO'' as 1900 instead of 2000. ``It would have been nice if they had started a year or two earlier, but we're optimistic there won't be any interruption in oil flow,'' said John Koskinen, chairman of the U.S. President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion. ``However, our oil inventories are sufficient to handle any eventuality for a few weeks.''

The U.S. government set up a reserve in 1975 to provide an emergency supply of oil in the event of a crisis, such as the Arab oil embargo of 1973. It currently holds about 573 million barrels of oil -- equal to two months of imports -- according to the Energy Department. The U.S. has tapped the reserve only once, in 1991, during the Persian Gulf War.

Oil companies doing business in the Gulf and local officials in the region said they are concerned about the lack of progress being made by government-run utilities, such as power and water.

["In general the situation is much better than before," said Mrayati. "Around 90 percent of the planned work has been addressed. I don't expect a great problem with oil supply." ]

Saudi Arabia Confident

However, Saudi Arabia, responsible for about 10 percent of the world's daily oil supply, said it is confident its computer systems will be ready to recognize the year 2000. ``Our worst case scenario would be to lose power for an extended period of time,'' said Saleh al-Zaid, head of the Y2K preparation team at Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company that exports more than 6 million barrels of oil per day. ``If that happened we would have enough oil stored at export terminals in the kingdom, Rotterdam and the U.S. to meet all our customers' requirements for about eight to nine days,'' he said.

Most of Saudi Arabia's critical oil installations have their own power plants. These include the Abqaiq facility, which can process 6 million barrels a day, as well as export terminals on the Gulf, gateway for 90 percent of its oil exports.

Mexico Ready, Too

Venezuela and Mexico, two other large exporters to the U.S., also said supplies won't be disrupted by computer breakdowns, and guaranteed all deliveries in the first days of 2000. They agreed to make up shortfalls in world output elsewhere if hobbled by the millennium bug.

Other Gulf producers, however, may not be in good shape.

Kuwait, which holds 9.3 percent of known global reserves, said the various components of its oil industry -- production, refining, shipping -- have different timetables for dealing with the computer bug. ``The production side is the most advanced and is finished testing,'' said Mifhari al-Obaid, an assistant managing director at the state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corp. ``In an emergency we would be able to run manually if the data systems stop.''

After a slow start in some ESCWA countries -- which covers Middle East Arab states from Egypt to the Gulf and include key U.S. suppliers Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE -- preparations have stepped up sharply towards the end of this year. A number of ESCWA states were due to finalise preparations by December 15.

[ "Kuwait has really worked hard in the last few months and I am more confident that the situation there is under control," said Mrayati who has visited almost all ESCWA countries recently to assess Y2K readiness. "Oman and the UAE has also taken the problem very seriously since the start of this year." ]

At least one-third of all nations won't have fully tested and fixed their computers by Jan. 1, despite the expenditure of between $300 billion and $600 billion by the world's companies and governments, according to analysts. ``As far as some of the oil companies in the area, a lot of them have just looked at what we call the front-end IT systems, and have not looked at the embedded systems,'' said Ron Nelson, a Dubai-based Y2K computer consultant.

Hidden Threat

Embedded systems consist of computer chips used outside of computers -- in power-distribution equipment, pipeline pump controls and other devices. ``Everyone considered Y2K as a PC-based problem, when in reality it was much larger,'' he said.

Also uncertain was the readiness of domestic Middle Eastern electricity and water suppliers, the U.N's Mrayati said. "Some of the control systems still needed to be finalised in December, while the water problems could be related to desalination stations," he said.

U.S. companies are joining in the fight against time in the Persian Gulf. Exxon Mobil Corp. said it is working with its joint venture operations in Saudi Arabia to prepare for the bug. ``We have organized training workshops and set up different in-house committees to tackle this issue,'' said Curtis Brand, chief executive officer of Mobil Saudi Arabia Inc. ``We are ... comfortable with the progress.''

Saudi Aramco and Exxon Mobil are partners in the SAMREF refinery on the kingdom's west coast, which refines about 350,000 barrels a day of crude oil into gasoline, jet fuel and gasoil, a group of fuels that includes heating oil.

-- Gordon (g_gecko_69@hotmail.com), December 21, 1999

Answers

Wow! Great example. You do good work!

-- (ladybuckeye_59@yahoo.com), December 21, 1999.

UN-FRIGGING-BELIEVABLE. Thanks, Gordon.

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.cum), December 21, 1999.

Gordon,

Thanks for laying it out there for all to see. This one is headed for my printer, to be added to the "How Could This Have Happened" file.

Nice work. Thanks for taking the time.

-- semper paratus (always@ready.now), December 21, 1999.


The closer we get, the clearer it becomes. A PR triumph, but the question is, who is doing this. What are the powers that be?

-- bb (b@b.b), December 21, 1999.

great post!

-- rw (ridleywalker@aol.com), December 21, 1999.


I can tell you exactly who's doing it. We were briefed by the CIA at API Taskforce meetings. I was pretty certain at the time that the information we were getting was disinformative in nature. However, many in the industry bought into the bullshit.

There has always been a strong relationship between oil and TPTB. Unfortunately in this case, the industry did a piss poor job of communicating the problem/risks since the industry was/is filled with techno dullards. Each year the industry loses millions and millions of dollars to consulting companies because the oil cos are so damn stupid when it comes to technology. You could fill Giants Stadium with the number of "enterprise" systems that have turned into "Klingon" systems (pun intended). Why anyone believed for a second that we would reliably handle a software/hardware project of this scope reliably is beyond me.

-- Gordon (g_gecko_69@hotmail.com), December 21, 1999.


Gordon is right. There are plenty of clued invididual engineers working in the oil industry, but the strategy decisions are largely taken by people who decide timescales and budgets first, and then do a "blame transfer" to engineering when they turn out to be inadequate.

-- Servant (public_service@yahoo.com), December 22, 1999.

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