[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Energy.]
By Stephanie Catarino WissmanReal Clear Energy
Too often, we take for granted the energy that powers our homes and vehicles and that is so essential to our daily lives. When consumers need it, it’s there.
The recent cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline, which stretches from Texas to New Jersey, reminds us that energy infrastructure to deliver fuel to gas pumps and power plants is also essential. Though the ttack prompted panic buying and gasoline shortages in the nation’s southeast, the problem wasn’t one of production but rather a disruption in the supply chain.
The temporary, but crippling, closure of this cross-country pipeline underscores the critical nature of energy infrastructure, especially fuel pipelines that bring oil and natural gas from producing areas to refineries, processing facilities, and consumers.
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As a top energy-consuming state and the nation’s second-largest net supplier of total energy to other states, Pennsylvania relies on more than 3,000 miles of liquid pipelines – along with over 10,000 miles of natural gas transmission pipelines – to securely transfer energy from the drilling rig to the gas pump, or for heating homes. Pipelines are the safest, most environmentally friendly way to transport oil and natural gas, and the products made from them, between states and major cities, including Philadelphia and its suburbs.
Pipelines have been essential to Pennsylvania’s energy revolution, too. With modern hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling of its abundant shale deposits, Pennsylvania has become the nation’s second-largest supplier of natural gas, prompting t ..
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