Tanker adrift off BC north coast

[GordonH]

^^ Do you care enough to cease using petroleum products?

If not you're just blowing smoke without conviction.

A rather pointless statement since those tankers will be hauling oil away, not to us.

With every tanker that leaves for China with Alberta crude, plastic items will be coming back to North America for consumers to buy.

[dogspoiler]

Yes, but they will not be in a tanker.

[GordonH]

Yes, but they will not be in a tanker.

Yes, they will be in container ships like or bigger than one will issues right now.

[dogspoiler]

I will work on stopping world trade tomorrow.
Today I have to solve peace in the middle east.

[GordonH]

I will work on stopping world trade tomorrow.
Today I have to solve peace in the middle east.

No need to worry, everything tend to work out in the end. Good luck though.

[flamingfingers]

Thankfully we did dodge a bullet, albeit a small one this time, but this should provide some food for thought among those who feel that we are even remotely prepared for any kind of tanker emergency off our west coast:

The Disaffected Lib
Dedicated to the Restoration of Progressive Democracy
Sunday, October 19, 2014
We Dodged a Bullet - This Time.

The floudering of the Russian bulk carrier, Simushir, is bound to become some sort of benchmark for the debate over tanker safety off the British Columbia coast. It shouldn't. Here's why.

Simushir isn't a supertanker. It's a bulk carrier. Its manifest does include some bunker oil and some diesel but there's also mining equipment and "chemicals" in its holds.

500 tonnes of bunker oil and 60 tonnes of diesel does not a supertanker make. Modern supertankers come in two flavours - VLCC, or very large cargo containers, and ULCC, or ultra large cargo containers. VLCCs can carry up to 320,000 deadweight tonnes of cargo. ULCCs up that to 550,000 tonnes.

The Simushir and a supertanker - apples and oranges.

A supertanker catastrophe isn't likely to occur where Simushir floundered. The Russian cargo ship wasn't in the Hecate Strait, Dixon Entrance or Douglas Channel where the supertankers of Harper's dreams will operate.

The Simushir was drifting in the relatively benign waters on the seaward side of Moresby Island. It's the equivalent of a kids' waterslide at a community park compared to white water rafting through Hell's Gate.

A potential, even if relatively modest, disaster was avoided when the Canadian Coast Guard coastal patrol vessel, Gordon Reid, managed to tow the Russian ship out to sea, 40 kms. from the coast of Moresby Island. The Reid was just enough ship to tow the bulk carrier but, even then, it lost all three of its tow lines in the process.

In the well-documented, diabolical storms that rake the Hecate Strait, with an actual VLCC in distress, the Gordon Reid would probably be reduced to assisting survivors.

Bunker oil isn't Dilbit - diluted bitumen. Bunker oil is oil. Bitumen is diluted tar. The sea is somewhat capable of dispersing conventional oil through surface wave action so long as the spill isn't too close to any shoreline. Dilbit, however, doesn't have the physical properties of conventional oil. Once spilled, the diluent or condensate separates out. The diluent heads to the surface, the denser bitumen congeals and heads to the bottom, carried to its final resting place by deepwater currents. Spread over a very large area and at great depths the bitumen is out of reach of oil spill responders and their "world class" equipment.

It took a massive and protracted effort to scrape most of the bitumen from the bottom of the shallow, slow-moving Kalamazoo River in Michigan. You can think of the Kalamazoo fiasco as a best case scenario. You can also think of a major bitumen spill on the northern BC coast as the worst of worst case scenarios.

At Kalamazoo, the burst Enbridge pipe dumped about a million gallons, just under 24,000 barrels, of dilbit into the river. The Exxon Valdez, a large supertanker for its time, lost somewhere between 11 and 32-million gallons of crude oil (not bitumen). Modern VLCCs and ULCCs carry far more still.

So, we dodged a bullet this time, several in fact. The Simushir was no supertanker. It was carrying a modest cargo of bunker oil and diesel. It wasn't in the treacherous inshore passages of the northern BC coast. By local standards, the winds and sea state were moderate enough to allow a Coast Guard patrol vessel to tow the bulk cargo carrier out to sea and safety, buying enough time for an ocean-going tug to arrive on scene - eventually.

Simushir is a wake-up call but the point to remember, when it's held up as an example of our "world class" rescue services, this time we were holding all the aces.

http://the-mound-of-sound.blogspot.ca/2 ... -time.html

[hobbyguy]

The ancillary question to all this, especially with regard to dilbit tankers, is how much will it cost to provide even adequate emergency services capable of dealing with most VLCC emergencies. And who pays.

Big tugs will cost about $12-15 million each, and the operating costs are something horrendous like $20,000?? per day. So round numbers, we should spend $100 million on tugs, and $45 million per year to maintain and operate them. Then there's the cost of any infrastructure. Like docks so they can be strategically placed. Fuel supply tanks, crew quarters, etc. etc.

So maybe Endbridge and K-M ought to pony up $150 million up front before any construction is approved to start, because it will take 3-5 yrs to get the tugs and train the crews. Plus another $45 million per yr operating fee once the tugs are in place.

Then we have to start talking about the disaster clean up equipment, warehouses for it, etc. etc. So maybe another $100 million? And another $15 million per year in standby costs?

If they don't come up with those kinds of numbers, then we are subsidizing Chinese state owned corporations to move product they want. To me, it seems such costs should be part of the transportation company's costs. Just as a trucking company with an oversize load has to pay for a pilot car, permits etc.

And no, I don't trust those companies to provide the critical services themselves. They'd subcontract it out to the lowest bidder and we get a response on par with the security contractor for CBSA who wasn't even able to tell 911 where he was working.

Mind you, subcontracting it to our federal government ain't working out so well either...

[LoneWolf_53]

^^ Do you care enough to cease using petroleum products?

If not you're just blowing smoke without conviction.

A rather pointless statement since those tankers will be hauling oil away, not to us.

Pointless?

Hardly! They're hauling oil away and bringing plastic crap you buy right back to us.

If they didn't have such a great market for their products here, chances are they'd have much less use for the oil.

[dogspoiler]

The important question is, who is going to buy us a new rope for our boat ?

[Bsuds]

The important question is, who is going to buy us a new rope for our boat ?

Our boat? It was a US Coast Guard ship was it not.

[steven lloyd]

They're going to send us the bill

[dogspoiler]

Our Coast Guard boat was first but it's rope broke, A large American tug was nearby and towed the ship to port.

[erinmore3775]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/barbara-foss-tug-arrives-at-russian-cargo-ship-simushir-adrift-off-haida-gwaii-1.2804589

A Canadian cutter began the tow, an American tug finished the job. However, there was no Canadian tug in the area capable of doing the job and the Barbara Foss was only close by (24 hours away) by pure luck, not good planning. A great deal more planning and preparation must be in place before increased tanker traffic should be allowed in the area. Currently we and the mericans seem to be at the limit of our safety and environmental protection capacity.

[my5cents]

Our boat? It was a US Coast Guard ship was it not.

The Canadian Coast Guard vessel Gordon Reid arrived more than 20 hours after the Simushir lost power. The coast guard vessel's tow line broke three times, though the Reid did successfully tow the cargo ship away from Haida Gwaii.

Can't blame you for the error in details. We've been told by various media outlets that... (these are all WRONG) :

- The Coast Guard ship towing the Simushir was a "tug boat"
- The Simushir is a bulk carrier
- The Simushir is a tanker
- The Simushir was "full of fuel"
- The Simushir was "laden with fuel"
- The problem with the Simushir was an broken oil cooling pump

The Simushir is a container ship. It did not have any fuel as cargo. It had diesel and bunker oil on board to fuel the ship. As far as ships go, 400 tonnes of bunker fuel is not a lot of fuel. Some large ships burn 100 tonnes a day.

The Canadian Coast Guard does not own a "tug boat".

Bunker oil is very thick (almost like tar) when cold. It has to be heated before it is used as fuel for the ship. Apparently the equipment that heats the bunker, the oil heater broke down and that's why the ship was dead in the water.

I can't recall a story that has contained so many errors by so many different news outlets. One will get the type of ship correct, but say the ship was being towed by a Coast Guard tub boat. One outlet will get all that right but go on to say the ship was disabled by an oil "cooling" pump.

This is a case of the media placing too much emphasis on a secondary fact. Yes a ship that is under way carries fuel, is that really a news item ?

A container ship traveling from A to B is dead in the water and there is a fear that it may run aground at X, the ship's fuel tanks contain 400 tonnes of bunk fuel and there is a fear of contamination if the tanks rupture.

If a semi trailer truck pulling an unloaded trailer goes off the road and rolls, a headline of "Semi carrying fuel rolls on Hwy 97" is accurate, but isn't it very deceiving ?

[Hassel99]

If a semi trailer truck pulling an unloaded trailer goes off the road and rolls, a headline of "Semi carrying fuel rolls on Hwy 97" is accurate, but isn't it very deceiving ?

It is intellectually dishonest. But it does not matter as those that wish for these events will eat it up anyway.