STORY:
Russia Facing Y2K Energy Crisis

According to a Reuters article that appeared in Russia Today, eastern Europe and former Soviet Union states could be hit with "severe shortages" of energy if Russia's natural gas pipeline stops working because of the year 2000 bug. The report cites a CIA analyst as a source for the story.

The article quotes the analyst as saying the region could survive a Gazprom shutdown for about 30 days with existing inventories despite its heavy dependence on the Gazprom Natural Gas Pipeline network owned by Russia.

Gazprom, whose assets include a quarter of the world's natural gas, supplies about half the energy used by Russia, plus 15 percent of energy consumed by Eastern Europe and 5 percent by Western Europe. The natural gas monopoly also is Russia's largest company.

U.S. intelligence officials have identified several potential problems with Gazprom's equipment, including:

• Aging mainframe computers roughly equivalent to the IBM 360 and 360 series that are "highly likely" to stop working on Jan. 1.
• Supervisory control and data acquisition systems, most of which were purchased years ago and not Y2K-ready.
• Satellite ground stations used to transfer data from production regions to Gazprom headquarters.
• Hundreds of unattended equipment stations in remote areas of Siberia that rely on embedded processors. Some of the stations, which control pipeline valves, are accessible only by helicopter.

Source: Reuters / Russia Today

DATE: 3/11/99

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