Oregon delays annual reporting deadline for Clean Fuels Program due to cyberattack

In Oregon, on April 18, DEQ announced that it would be proposing to the Environmental Quality Commission that the Annual Report deadlines for the Clean Fuels Program should be delayed to May 30 due to a system outage.

On Wednesday April 9, DEQ was struck with a cyberattack that crippled agency systems, including the Oregon Fuels Reporting System that is used by fuel suppliers to file their reporting for the CFP and Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, generate and trade Clean Fuels Program credits, and demonstrate compliance with the Clean Fuels Program.

DEQ staff have been working through the weekend and into the evenings to get our systems back up and running, but we have been unable to get OFRS back up and running as of April 17. No data breach has been detected from the cyberattack, but in order to safely bring our systems back online we have determined that we must restore to a backup of the system that was taken over the weekend prior to the attack. This means many actions taken by participants on Monday and Tuesday of that week will be lost and must be redone.

April is the busiest month for the Clean Fuels Program’s participants and staff due to the annual report deadline given that many co panies must conduct credit transfers and file – sometimes extensive corrections to their quarterly reporting prior to the deadline.

Given the duration of the system outage and the need for participants to correct their reports and conduct credit transfers, and in some cases redo those actions if they were lost, the agency has opted to propose delaying the Annual Report and compliance deadline.