It is a case of the missing e-mail alert that was being debated in local California news media Tuesday regarding whether or not the nation’s largest natural gas distribution utility was alerted by the FBI last week concerning the potential threat to U.S. natural gas supplies and/or infrastructure as an outgrowth of the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan. The FBI said they sent an e-mail; Sempra Energy’s Southern California Gas Co. in Los Angeles said it never received it.

Regardless, the gas-only utility, one of Sempra’s two major private sector utilities, has been on “high alert” ever since the Sept. 11 attacks, a corporate spokesperson was quoted as saying in a San Diego Union-Tribune report on the dispute. Meanwhile, the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates SoCalGas’ extensive intrastate, high-pressure transmission pipeline system covering the southern half of the state, said through a spokesperson that it wasn’t necessarily informed by the FBI, but assured news media it was “taking appropriate measures,” without specifying what those are.

An FBI spokesperson in the agency’s San Diego office said that Sempra was alerted, but that the federal agency is not telling its gas utility what to do. “We’re giving them the information,” said Jan Caldwell in the Union-Tribune article. “It’s up to them what they do with it.”

The FBI also alerted the American Gas Association and the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, both of whom said they informed their members.

Sources pointed out the FBI advisory used the words “natural gas supplies.” It did not say “infrastructure,” although that could be inferred. Supplies also could mean the LNG which comes into the United States in ships.

While refusing earlier in the month to give any specifics, Sempra has made public the fact that it has added ground and aerial patrols, video surveillance and motion detectors in “sensitive areas.” It has also intensified training of employees to make them more sensitive and savvy about “suspicious people and activities.” Immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, the company said it did daily checks of its gas pipelines.

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