March 4, 2021
The University of Wyoming’s Enhanced Oil Recovery Institute (EORI) has reviewed the impact of President Joe Biden’s temporary moratorium on new oil and gas leases on federal lands, finding significant potential impacts on Wyoming oil and gas production, access to existing and future reserves, as well as state revenue.
EORI says its analysis of the federal lease moratorium on Wyoming’s conventional oil reserves is stark due to the fact that the federal government owns 68 percent of the federal minerals in the state. The federal lease moratorium will impact 75 percent of Wyoming’s legacy (conventional) fields and 60 percent of drillable land. This policy will restrict, or possibly prevent, access to 2.9 billion barrels of potentially recoverable oil reserves on federal lands and the associated $12.9 billion in tax revenue, according to the EORI report.
The digital revolution in the energy sector comes with huge benefits and brings new challenges for cybersecurity. As energy companies digitally connect operational technologies such as gas compressors, electricity substations, and electric vehicle (EV) chargers with information technology (IT) systems to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and cut emissions, they simultaneously become more vulnerable to cyberattacks. Energy companies are expected to connect 2.5 billion industrial devices in the next two years and each new digital node represents an opportunity for attackers to disrupt power, cause immense economic and physical damage, and threaten essential services.
2021 will shine a light on the need for industrial cybersecurity to serve as the foundation for the evolving digital energy ecosystem. Digitalization and the energy transition dramatically accelerated in the tumultuous and unpredictable 2020. Energy companies, investors, and policymakers must now look to cybersecurity a