The Nickel Report

On April 15, 2025, President Trump took two additional actions building on previous initiatives focused on streamlining and supporting domestic mining and mineral production, including the Immediate Measures to Increase American Mineral Production executive order issued on March 20, 2025 (the Mining Order) and the Unleashing American Energy executive order from January 20, 2025.

Recent press reports indicate that a cyber-attack disabled the third-party platform used by oil and gas pipeline company Energy Transfer Partners to exchange documents with other customers. Effects from the attack were largely confined because no other systems were impacted, including, most notably, industrial controls for critical infrastructure. However, the attack comes on the heels of a Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) alert warning of Russian attempts to use tactics including spearphishing, watering hole attacks, and credential gathering to target industrial control systems throughout critical infrastructure, as well as an indictment against Iranian nationals who used similar tactics to attack private, education, and government intuitions, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”). These incidents are raising questions about cybersecurity across the US pipeline network.