Attacks on energy facilities rising: Germany

Attacks on energy facilities world-wide to hinder the delivery of gas and oil have been rising sharply, the head of Germany's foreign intelligence agency said on Thursday.
"In the past few years we have registered a significant increase in terrorist attacks on energy infrastructure and we must state that there have been qualitative changes," the head of Germany's Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Ernst Uhrlau, told a conference on energy security organised by the BND.
He said attacks on facilities used to be directed at disrupting regional energy supplies, such as those on Colombian oil pipelines, but noted this had changed.
"Today, they are increasingly focused on limiting the global supply of energy," he said. "Around three years ago the world energy supply came into the crosshairs of al Qaeda, thereby defining attack options for the Islamist terrorist network."
Heiner Wegesin, head of counterterrorism and organised crime at the BND, said Iraq's oil infrastructure had become a preferred target for insurgents, who he said have launched over 300 attacks on such facilities since the US invasion in 2003.
"Oil extraction and transport facilities were the most frequently attacked (facilities) in Iraq between June 2003 and August 2006," Wegesin told the audience of mostly politicians, diplomats and security officials.
The attacks ranged from simple attacks using explosive charges to damage oil and gas pipelines to sophisticated, co-ordinated multiple attacks, Wegesin said. Uhrlau said the finite nature of energy resources is also deepening fears that problems of access to shrinking deposits of gas and oil will increasingly lead to conflicts.
"Questions of energy security will fundamentally help determine the security agenda of the 21st century," Uhrlau said. While deposits of oil and gas are gradually depleted, the renaissance of nuclear energy world-wide, especially in the world's crisis regions, raised further security questions.
New nuclear reactors "combined with optional or real nuclear weapons programmes can create a new international security agenda, something we've already had a taste of this week with North Korea", Uhrlau said.
There are also political problems in the oil- and gas-producing countries, where scant attention is paid to comprehensive economic reforms, he said. "Due to the significantly increasing gas and oil income, many countries are neglecting reforms of those parts of the economy outside the energy sector and corruption is spreading," Uhrlau said.