htxag09 said:
I'm sure there will also insurance dollars at play.
And, yeah, probably cheaper than a few bollards. But are you suggesting they should have anticipated this incident at this one location? Otherwise, we're talking a few thousand bollards, minimum.
Even a few thousand bollards is far cheaper than what they will fork out, right or wrong, here. And if they don't and another incident happens - they will be royally fooked because in that event the lawyers will get to talk about willful ignorance on Energy Transfer's part.
Just for grins, take this valve station. Dimensions are approximately 50' x 30'. You typically place bollards every 4' so vehicles can't squeeze through.
That station would have ~50 bollards. Each one is 8' of 6" Sch. 40 pipe. I'm not calculating the actual amount of concrete, so call it a full truck (10 yards) to make it easy, have 6 of them be removable so you can access the gates.
Pipe - $300 per, so $15k
Concrete - $1200
Labor @ 1/3 material cost - $5500
P&OH @ 15% - $3500
Total - $25k
I guarantee you that is a ton cheaper than even the lawyers fees they will fork out just to begin to deal with this. And this station is on the larger side. But even then, assume $25k for each one and you have say 100 of them you assess as high priority. That's only $2.5 MM. Which is still probably less than the lawyer's fees they are going to fork out, much less all of the other ways they are going to get dinged. Their insurance premium will go up by that much because of this incident alone.
*these are back of the napkin numbers and not to be taken as some type of 100% accurate estimate