INSIGHT: US firms say their sites are secure

11 September 2007 14:33  [Source: ICIS news]

By Joe Kamalick

 

WASHINGTON (ICIS news)--Six years after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, US chemical companies say their most at-risk production sites have been hardened, but security improvements must continue and likely will never be complete.

 

“The industry, certainly our member companies, are much better protected than they were six years ago,” said Marty Durbin, managing director for federal affairs at the American Chemistry Council (ACC).

 

Durbin said the council’s 130 member firms - who account for some 90% of US industrial chemicals production capacity - have invested nearly $5bn (€3.6bn) in security improvements since 2001.

 

While chemical production and bulk storage facilities are better protected, he said, “it is an area in which we will probably never be done”.

 

“We have a much closer relationship with federal security and intelligence agencies now, and a much better partnership with government at all levels,” Durbin said. 

 

“This allows us to make a continuing assessment of the threat picture, and we take information that government agencies now provide and we see what might be needed to meet that changing threat picture,” he said.

 

As a consequence, as the threat profile changes so too will chemical producers have to adjust and improve their safeguards.

 

Immediately after the 9/11 terrorists hijacked airliners - and America’s sense of security - to lay waste to the World Trade Center towers in New York and strike the Pentagon near Washington, policymakers became very uneasy about the potential for terrorist strikes on US chemical facilities.

 

Members of Congress and state legislators worried that terrorists might target a major chemicals complex in hopes of turning it into a weapon of mass destruction, triggering a massive release of highly toxic substances into a neighbouring population centre.

 

In part because of initial opposition by many in the chemicals industry, it took Congress five years to reach a compromise on legislation mandating a federal standard for and regulation of chemical plant site security.

 

The law passed in late 2006 requires the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to establish and enforce antiterrorism security standards at “high risk” chemical facilities - those with the greatest potential for loss of life or critical economic consequences if struck by terrorists.

 

Those high risk sites, which are yet to be defined, will be required to conduct vulnerability assessments, get department approval for remedial security plans and then implement them to government satisfaction.

 

The department is just about ready to begin implementing its regulations, but there is a delay in compiling a final list of some 350 chemicals or substances that, in certain threshold amounts, will trigger reporting and compliance obligations.

 

In any event, the department’s investigators already are visiting chemical facilities that are certain to be determined high risk.

 

According to National Petrochemical & Refiners Association (NPRA) spokesman Bill Holbrook, those inspectors will find chemical plants that very probably already meet or beat federal requirements.

 

“Facility security has always been a priority for refineries and petrochemical plants,” Holbrook said.  “These industries have long operated globally, often in unstable regions overseas where security is an integral part of providing for the world’s energy and petrochemical needs.”

 

The 9/11 attacks demonstrated “that there were increased risks and vulnerabilities in our own country,” Holbrook noted.  “Individual facilities have spent many millions of dollars upgrading their security posture,” he said.

 

“Even before DHS was given this new regulatory authority, however, the department had been working with industry on a cooperative, voluntary basis,” Holbrook said, so the industry is ready for formal federal regulation of security at high risk sites.

 

Smaller producers also are ready, according to Bill Allmond, director of government relations at the Synthetic Organic Chemicals Manufacturers Association (SOCMA). 

 

SOCMA, whose roughly 300 member firms are specialty chemical and custom batch producers, moved on the issue before Uncle Sam did.

 

“SOCMA was one of the first chemical industry associations to develop a security vulnerability assessment model,” Allmond said, “so our members completed those assessments well before the DHS rules were developed, and security plans are already in place.”

 

“Much of what has been done by our members will most likely be acceptable under the new DHS rules,” Allmond said.

 

However, all three of the major US chemical industry trade groups recognize that the department may ask more of some producers.

 

“If there is more that we need to do, that’s fine,” said ACC’s Durbin.  “Even those who may have to do more to boost their security are well on their way.”

 

In addition, even before the department begins full implementation of existing site security requirements, many in Congress want to change the rules and toughen the regulations.

 

Democrats who won majority control of Congress from Republicans in the November 2006 US national elections are not happy with the site security law passed under Republican control. 

 

New Democrat-sponsored legislation pending in Congress would allow individual states to regulate security at chemical sites within their borders. 

 

With the stated interest of allowing the public more access to critical information important to local communities, another measure would weaken confidentiality provisions for security-related information producers must provide to the department.

 

Holbrook worries that weaker confidentiality provisions could give potential terrorists “insights into how to attack chemical facilities and neutralise existing defences”.

 

The industry also is concerned that without federal pre-emption of state law in this area, producers could be facing a patchwork of varying site security requirements across the country.

 

Durbin and Allmond also expect more congressional hearings and bill-rattling before the year is out.  Whether Congress will actually pass new site security measures this year remains to be seen.

 

If not this year, however, new chemical site security legislation is definitely on the horizon.  The measure passed by Congress late last year has a three-year sunset provision; the law will expire in 2009 unless federal lawmakers renew it.

By: Joe Kamalick
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