FBI reminds Basin residents terrorism can happen here
By Julie Breaux
Odessa American
Odessa-Midland is more vulnerable to terrorist attacks than other similarly sized metropolitan areas because of its oil and gas infrastructure and its connection to the Bush family, a Midland FBI agent said Thursday.
At The Pipeline Group’s annual pipeline safety course Thursday, Special Agent Matthew Espenshade reminded nearly 200 of the area’s emergency-response personnel that the threat of terrorism in the Permian Basin remains “very real.”
“Sure it could happen here,” said Espenshade, a former Army intelligence officer who helped supervise the investigation of the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. “We have a connection to the Bush administration. The Bushes are from Midland-Odessa. That’s pretty well-known.”
And the area is vulnerable because of its extensive oil and gas infrastructure, which extends to the West Coast, Gulf Coast and the nation’s heartland.
“The nation as a whole needs to be aware that real threats exist, and that doesn’t exclude a small, out-of-the-way community like Midland-Odessa,” Espenshade said.
“We also have to be aware of what’s happening around us.”
Espenshade gave the group gathered inside Barn A of the Ector County Coliseum a quick study on the nation’s critical infrastructures and a federal initiative called the Key Asset Program.
West Texas-based oil and gas storage and delivery systems are an element of the nation’s critical infrastructure, as are telecommunications, transportation, banking and finance, emergency service, electrical and energy, and government operations, Espenshade said.
The Key Asset Program is a revitalized initiative aimed at creating a professional relationship between the FBI and owners and operators of key assets on a local level.
Because several oil-and-gas-related key assets are located in the Permian Basin, Espenshade asked first-responders at Thursday’s safety course to consider that an industrial accident such as a pipeline explosion may be connected to the ongoing terrorist threat, and to be careful to preserve the scene of a suspicious incident until it could be determined if the FBI needs to respond.
“This is something we’re taking very seriously,” Espenshade said.
Espenshade said he’s been working closely with a task force of local, state and federal law enforcement personnel to discuss security issues, the goal being to give the FBI the chance to thwart a 9/11-style attack. “The reason we want this information is when we go out (in the field) we can do what the media said we didn’t do well before 9/11, and that’s connect the dots,” he said.
With limited resources to monitor its 14-county region, the Midland FBI office relies on oil industry personnel to be its eyes and ears in the field.
“And it really comes down to how broad your information-gathering is. You really rely on those people out there to feed you information.”
At Thursday’s safety meeting, emergency response personnel received printed updates on changes in the oil and gas gathering and distribution landscape in the past 12 months.
In the last year, Energas became Atmos Energy; Texaco Exploration and Production became ChevronTexaco Exploration and Production; First Permian is now Energen Resources; and the Equilon Pipeline is now the Shell Pipeline Co.
For Odessa Fire Department Chief Steve Pollock, getting an updated roster of industry players and emergency contacts for each is one of the main reasons he makes the meeting each year.
“What we get out of these each year is that private industry is changing all the time,” Pollock said. “They’re changing ownership, combining and buying each other out. We don’t know who to contact, and it can really create a problem for us on the scene. We have to be able to identify who owns the line."
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