B.C.’s long history of tanker traffic

By Letter to the Editor on May 19, 2018.

For more than 60 years, tankers have travelled through the Burrard Inlet in British Columbia without incident. All tankers calling on Vancouver are double-hulled, which means there are two layers of heavy steel protecting their cargo. Transport Canada Port State Control monitors every vessel that comes into Canadian waters. Tankers currently servicing Kitimat are product tankers while those servicing Vancouver are up to and including the Aframax Class. The Port of Vancouver sees about 30 to 50 crude oil tankers per year.

On Vancouver Island every time you fuel your car, your boat, your motorcycle, your lawnmower, your tractor you are using fuel brought by the Vancouver Island Tanker Fleet. Each drop of gasoline is first brought to the island via tanker barge and tug, hundreds of thousands of liters at a time.

Just south of Cowichan Bay you’ll find an offloading terminal regularly visited by Island Tug and Barge’s Island Monarch and Island Trader. Gasoline, diesel fuel, furnace oil and other petroleum products are offloaded to the tank farm just up the hill. Island Tug and Barge runs one of the larger fleets of fuel delivery barges, serving everyone from tank farms to remote coastal communities and logging camps.

Then there’s the BC Ferry fleet. They carry some of the highest fuel loads of any of the many vessels that pay call at Vancouver Island ports. The Coastal Inspiration for example, burns an average of 9,719 liters of diesel fuel for each round trip it makes between Tsawassen and Duke Point, near Nanaimo. The ferry fleet uses some 18.8 million liters of fuel annually, and all of that fuel travels back and forth across our straits, bays and inlets until it is burned.

These ferries, and Seaspan’s truck freight barge operation, transport all manner of truck trailers back and forth across Georgia Strait, some of which are loaded with petroleum products. All come over by truck from the mainland by vessel.

The Gulf Islands, Saltspring, Denman and Quadra all have fuels delivered. Cortez or Hornby Islands needs to take three separate ferry hops to get that liter of fuel or container of kerosene. It’s a fact of life all the Islands burn petroleum products on a daily basis. It’s also a fact that this product has to come via the water.

Do the coastal people want tankers stopped?

Eugene Adamson

Medicine Hat

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