Imagine that…not like we didn’t learn that last year with toilet paper too.
2 Likes
Will this thread live forever?
1 Like
Well…if you owned a gas station, and the cash register stopped working, would you let folks fill up?
1 Like
Time to ditch the computers in the billing department and replace the computers with little old ladies with quill pens. Quill pens can’t be hacked.
2 Likes
It’ll continue until everyone has used it to promote their own agenda.
4 Likes
If they were loyal customers who had accounts with me, yes, and then I’d establish a fair way to record how much fuel they dispensed.
This is not 1950 where gas stations and grocery stores pulled out their account pads to record sales. Who has “accounts” with gas stations, unless you get gas delivered to the farm by a jobber? Credit card, debit card, maybe even cash and a 13 column ledger (oh I don’t think you can even buy those anymore). For the station I suppose they could record card information for processing later, or if they still had the old imprint machine?
So that takes care of the guy wanting gas from the station that went dark. OK, now how do you get a truck load of gas delivered to the station again from the depot? Big debit card maybe? Yeah doesn’t take long to screw up a supply line by cutting the coax.
If the card reader on the pump isn’t working, I go elsewhere.
If the station charges more for using a CC, I go elsewhere.
4 Likes
That would (should) have probably been fine for the pipeline because those are all corporate accounts. I don’t know of any gas stations around me who still establish accounts with individual customers.
1 Like
We had an ice storm hit our area back in 2005. It took down power lines and our house was without power. We found a restaurant that was open and while we were having our meal, it lost power. All the customers were given a free meal because the cash register wouldn’t work. I think all the customers should have been given free gasoline.
I remember when I was 6 years old, the power went off in the little mom and pop grocery store where my mother was shopping. The proprietor got out a crank and hand operated the cash register. Maybe we have lost something over the last 73 years.
1 Like
This thread isn’t even about gas stations. It’s about an oil pipeline, and I thought we were using an analogy.
The pipeline company knows who its customers are, and they have accounts.
They are few and far between now, but even the gas stations that have these accounts setup for local businesses process them digitally these days.
But keeping track of the fuel delivery is not that simple if the pipeline system is off line.
1 Like
No, it wouldn’t be easy at all to estimate the amount of fuel dispensed, but keeping the fuel flowing in exchange for short term reduced profits to avert a crisis wasn’t even considered, evidently.
Also, keeping the fuel pumping would have taken away the extortionists’ leverage, so they wouldn’t have had to pay the ransom.
I wonder if the $4,400,000 ransom they paid was more than they would have lost in profits to keep the pipeline running.
In preparation for Y2K, the company I worked for put a new computer system on line. Some people in the industry have nicknamed it Slow And Painful. It was a dumpster fire on a train wreck. We could enter customer orders, manufacturing could see the orders but not process them. We ended up using brute force to kick out production orders. Once product was built, we could not process shipping documents or invoices. We manually shipped product to our customers knowing we had a snowballs chance of getting an invoice kicked out. We were able to identify millions of dollars of lost invoicing, no idea how much we could not identify. In the end we recovered, our customers stuck by us. Customers were frustrated during our start up, but in the long run we did the right thing. Colonial could have done something similar, it requires all hands on deck, long hours and the results would not be 100%. But the nation would have not been at risk. Just my humble opinion.
That is true, but somehow I doubt if Colonial’s management really cares about that issue. They are back in business and like any relationship between an addict and his supplier, they have a secure business model.
I think the best that we can hope for is that they have wised-up and–belatedly–have added sufficient cyber security to prevent a recurrence.
1 Like
lets go back to the good old days with cash or the credit card that was run through manually and you got a carbon copy. as far as the pipe line… hire people to turn on manually by turning valves.
1 Like
Actually I think it was mainly in regard to gas stations running out of gas from the pipeline shutdown. Gas lines, out of gas signs, etc. Just like the good ole days.
I somehow get the impression that you think the pipeline runs from Texas to individual BP stations and others. Producer to depots, the trucked to individual stations. Anything in the chain disrupts the supply. Same thing with bread.
1 Like
Your impression is mistaken, but nice try.