B.C. has never had an oil-tanker spill — but it only takes one
Barges break loose.
Rarely, but it does happen. Something goes sideways, usually during snotty weather, and next thing you know a tugboat is heading one way and the load it was towing or pushing is going somewhere else.
It happened Sunday up the central coast near Bella Bella, when a fuel barge came free of its tug. Two crew members managed to clamber aboard and drop anchor, but there were anxious hours before another tug, the Gulf Cajun, arrived to recapture the 128-metrelong barge and its four million litres of diesel and gasoline.
For people in Bella Bella, it was an unwelcome echo of October 2016 when the tug Nathan E. Stewart ran aground, leaking 110,000 litres of diesel.
Also in 2016, right here in Victoria, a March storm blew two barges onto the beach as they were being towed past Dallas Road. One was retrieved within a day, but it took two weeks to refloat the second. Happily, the latter was loaded with nothing more hazardous than construction debris, so the environmental threat was relatively minor. Still, the fact that it took so long to deal with a problem here in the city, not off some remote stretch of coastline, shows how hard it can be to rectify marine mishaps.
Vancouver Islanders did once see how ugly it can get if a fuel barge spills its contents. Two days before Christmas 1988, the tanker barge Nestucca — after being loaded at the BP refinery at Cherry Point, Washington, and dragged past Victoria’s front porch — snapped its tow line near Grays Harbor, Washington. When the tug tried to retrieve the Nestucca, it punched a hole in the barge, resulting in the spill of 875,000 litres of Bunker C fuel oil.
On the U.S. side, tens of thousands of birds died and tar-like oil mucked the shore from northern Oregon to Dungeness Spit, right across the strait from Victoria. The goop also fouled Vancouver Island beaches from Sooke to Nootka Sound. Estimates of the number of dead Vancouver Island birds ranged from 3,100 to 56,000. The cleanup cost Canadian taxpayers $4.6 million. The spill was just 1/50th the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster that hit Alaska in 1989.
That was a long time ago, too long for many to remember. It’s a sign of how safe marine shipping really is. Ocean-going vessels transit Juan de Fuca Strait something like 10,000 times a year. Tankers of Alaska crude are visible from Victoria as they sail for northern Washington refineries. Bulk carriers laden with sand and gravel from northern Vancouver Island make the four-day journey to California. Coal carriers from Roberts Bank, container ships from Deltaport, nuclear submarines from the Kitsap naval base in Puget Sound — the strait is a two-lane highway that rarely sees anyone veer into the ditch.
The problem is that “rarely” doesn’t mean “never.” In 1991, the Japanese fish processor Tenyo Maru sank after colliding with a Chinese freighter at Swiftsure Bank. One crew member died and fuel oil spread to Oregon.
And there have been close calls. In November 2009, the bulk carrier Hebei Lion was blown onto a rocky reef near Mayne Island. Washington’s Ecology Department said a major spill there could have closed shipping altogether. A year later, a South Korean captain was jailed for drunk-driving a cargo ship near Port Angeles. In 2011, the captain of the USS Kentucky was disciplined after the nuclear-powered submarine almost hit a freighter in the strait.
Still, as British Columbians ponder the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion, industry can argue that the sky has not actually fallen, that B.C. has never had an oil tanker spill. It only takes one, comes the reply.
The question becomes what level of risk is acceptable, and what can be done to mitigate it.
Almost exactly a year ago, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the National Oceans Protection Plan, a five-year, $1.5-billion strategy the feds hoped would make B.C. coastal residents feel better about assuming all of the danger, and little of the benefit, of shipping Alberta oil by ocean tanker. Ottawa’s plan includes creating a marine safety system, restoring marine ecosystems, working with Indigenous communities and spending on oilspill cleanup research. More radar sites for marine monitoring are promised, as are two rescue tugs for the West Coast.
Is that enough? Depends on if you see the oil barrel as half empty or half full.
BELLA BELLA — A loaded fuel barge that broke away from its tug off B.C.’s central coast was being towed to safety on Monday as the threat of a spill diminished, officials said.
The barge, loaded with 3.5 million litres of diesel and 468,000 litres of gasoline, was set to anchor off Campbell Island in the Inside Passage.
A U.S.-registered tugboat, the Jake Shearer, was pushing the barge through Queen Charlotte Sound when it broke free southwest of Bella Bella on Sunday.
Roger Girouard, assistant coast guard commissioner, said the vessel encountered strong seas and suffered damage, which broke the pin arrangement connecting the tug to the barge.
“The control of the barge was lost and the barge started drifting onto the B.C. coast,” he said.
On Sunday evening, the barge crew laid an anchor, which held and kept the barge off the rocks near Goose Island, Girouard said.
He said coast guard resources, including the Norman Reid, arrived on the scene in stormy weather. A decision was made to let the anchor hold as conditions were expected to improve.
“We watched and were ready just in case the anchor did drag, but it did not,” he said.
The tugboat Gulf Cajun picked up the barge — identified by the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre as the Zidell Marine 277 — and it was scheduled to reach its destination on Monday evening.
Washington state-based Harley Marine Services owns both the tug and barge. Vicepresident of safety Rich Soft ye said the incident is regrettable.
“We’re doing a full investigation to make sure that if there’s anything that is a problem on the operation side that could have been changed, we will change,” he said.
The company was also speaking with the manufacturer of the linking system, he said.
He said the company has been using socalled articulated tug barges — where a tug pushes a barge rather than pulls it — for years and has never had any safety issues.
“We were hit by a couple of very large waves, cross-wise, from the port side that caused everything to be slammed over,” he said. “With that, the separation took place.”
Articulated tug barges are more fuelefficient and require fewer crew members than traditional tugboats, but they are more difficult to control in rough seas or bad weather, said Mike Fitzpatrick, president and CEO of Robert Allan Ltd., a naval architecture and marine engineering firm.
“If you’re in really rough weather, barges need to be towed. If you’re in sheltered waters, they can be pushed,” he said.
Girouard said the tug was en route to Alaska from Seattle and was in international waters, defined as being more than 12 nautical miles from Canada’s shoreline, when it hit heavy weather.
After the Nathan E. Stewart sank near Bella Bella and spilled 110,000 litres of diesel last year, greater restrictions were placed on access to Canadian waters by U.S. tugboats, he said.
“This, along with the Nathan E. Stewart spill, will cause us to take a look at the spectrum of rules and the guidance that this type of vessel has along Canadian waters,” he said.
Heiltsuk First Nation Chief Marilyn Slett said her community is still recovering from last year’s spill and this latest incident shows a response centre is needed on the central coast.
She called on the federal government to help fund an Indigenous response centre that would have equipment and vessels as well as training and certification for its members.