Gas supplier blames 'rogue' code for Channel Island outage
- Reference: 1697185807
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/10/13/gas_supplier_blames_rogue_code/
- Source link:
On Saturday, the island off the coast of northern France lost its gas supply. The following day the CEO of supplier Island Energy said the La Collette plant automatically switched off to protect the wider network – and then backup systems also failed. The energy firm warned it might take two weeks to restore the supply of gas.
Jo Cox told the [1]BBC that "rogue code" caused the power failure at the plant.
[2]
"Initially, all we knew was that the power had seized in the plant, which meant the plant turned itself off to protect the network," she said.
[3]
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At the same time, backup systems also failed, she said. "All of them failed at exactly the same time because of the code," Cox said, describing the probability of the occurrence as "like winning the EuroMillions" lottery.
The Register has contacted Island Energy for more details.
[5]
Jersey – for which the US state of New Jersey was named – is a British crown dependency which is not part of the UK, the EU or France.
The La Collette plant was run by Shell until 2008, when it was sold to Rubis, a French energy group. Its subsidiary Rubis Terminal [6]developed safety-sharing software [PDF] in 2017 to exchange safety-related information across the group.
[7]Methane-spotting satellite that gives true readings of industry emissions hits skies in 2024
[8]Power grid worries force Amazon to run Oregon datacenters using fuel cells
[9]Europe wants more cities to use datacenter waste heating. How's that going?
[10]Cisco warns of critical flaw in Emergency Responder code
La Collette Terminal is a subsidiary service provider but does not own or sell fuel or stock. The Register has contacted the biz for further comment.
Pull the lever, residents asked
Speaking to local news, Cox called on local residents to pull the lever next to their gas meters to cut off the supply of gas to their home and to then register that they had done so with the company. Although meters have built-in failsafe systems, the supplier wanted to assess how safe it would be to return the supply by considering the number of individuals responding. If enough responded that they have turned off their supply, it can opt for a "self-restoration" – which might take days. On the other hand, if the risk is too high, a safer "engineered" approach might take weeks.
"My key message is that customers can help us with the speed of restoration by pulling that lever and registering that they've pulled it. It's really easy and there is a video on our website showing how it's done," she [11]told a local news service . ®
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[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-jersey-67045835
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZSkVQHF8hhFYpCeBMobHXgAAAFM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZSkVQHF8hhFYpCeBMobHXgAAAFM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZSkVQHF8hhFYpCeBMobHXgAAAFM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZSkVQHF8hhFYpCeBMobHXgAAAFM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://echanges.dila.gouv.fr/OPENDATA/AMF/EQS/8888/01/FCEQS000099_20180514.pdf
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/12/methanesat_set_to_monitor_methane/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/06/amazon_datacenter_hydrogen_fuel/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/20/europe_waste_datacenter_heating/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/05/cisco_icritical_emergency/
[11] https://jerseyeveningpost.com/news/2023/10/10/island-energy-gas-outage-not-a-cyber-attack-but-cannot-rule-it-out/
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Million to one chances ....
But what if it's not EXACTLY a million to one?
Clusterfsck
Curious
Obviously incompetence has to be considered before (and despite) malice (if you left the door open and your company got burgled, then the blame lies jointly between you and the burglar)
But it is curious that this event happened so close to a second mysteriously exploding gas pipeline between Finland and Latvia this week.
Well that was like reading an error report from a user
I mean, who knows what "rogue code" is.
The only thing you can be sure is if the main system fails and the backup system fails in exactly the same way, it's not the because the chances are "like winning the EuroMillions" lottery, it's because the same software failing in exactly the same way on the exactly same input.
Re: Well that was like reading an error report from a user
Pretty much the same situation that took down NATS recently
"because of the code"
No. The code is not responsible here. It may be the direct cause, but the real responsible is the idiot who bungled the specifications and did not do sufficient testing to ensure that the code would work in extreme situations.
Blaming the code is easy, but code is just the materialization of a list of scenarios. If you have a scenario that was not foreseen, then the code is likely to not solve the problem.
Somebody didn't foresee this, or didn't put in the effort to check if the code was viable in that situation.
It's still not the code that is at fault.
A software problem caused facility to failover to safety mode?
Meaningless pseudo techno babble.
"All of them failed at exactly the same time because of the code"
I don't believe it!
“Rubis Énergie and Rubis Terminal continued to deploy their collaborative software for the preventive maintenance of facilities ( [1]computerized maintenance management system ). Once the relevant information has been loaded into the database, these systems allow the planning of monitoring and preventive maintenance work.”
[1] https://echanges.dila.gouv.fr/OPENDATA/AMF/EQS/8888/01/FCEQS000099_20180514.pdf
Million to one chances ....
.... happen 9 times out of 10! - PTerry