The Scourge of the American Petroleum Tankers That Prowl the British Columbia Coast - Counterpunch November 26 marked a dreadful anniversary for the tanker-bedraggled British Columbia coast. One year ago in Hecate Strait, the American ATB “pusher tug” Jake Shearer broke apart from its fully loaded…

[image] OneEighteen: The men and women who work on ATBs do an outstanding job with questionable equipment. Their vessels in every case require more work and more exposure to risk Yes, I think that’s worth pointing out. I never worked on an ATB but I do know a conventional wire boat is hard a…

I come to this thread as a Towboater whose career was spent in these waters from a green deckhand to Master on Canadian tugs. These ranged from 0 (rulebeater) to 500T. The cargos covered the gamut from oil to logs. I attest that it took more than 12 transits before an owner gave me a few million wor…

[image] OneEighteen: Read this, it was mentioned in a forum several years ago and every time there is an accident I think of it: http://www.c4tx.org/ctx/pub/tromedy2.pdf I still have to finish the book but reading only the Preface is enough to spur you on to read it all. He is hitting the na…

[image] tugsailor: I’m sure that Nathan Stewart must have had a chart plotter with features that were close enough to ECDIS. With ECDIS it’s mandatory to set cross-track error limits for each leg, an alarm will sound when the limit is reached. In addition an alarm would sound if the vessel wa…

[image] SaltAir: A local major energy sector operator considers 12 mtr breakout a good fit: https://www.islandtug.com/island-trader-barge married to https://www.islandtug.com/island-monarch-tug But they also have Island Raider and her soon to be christened sister. Island Raider is beautif…

I live and work the central coast. I transit The inside passage regularly also the Hecate. On one hand the proposed pipelines could be lucrative for me. I prefer my environment is kept free of bitumen tankers. The Nathan E Stuart’s barge did not leak. The fact it was an oil barge got every excited…

This is a good point. Local tug companies that know the local business and local waters, are how the tugboat business is supposed to work. Distant companies run by lawyers, accountants, and financiers and would be opportunists cutting prices and jumping into work and waters they do not know. This i…

In the event of an incident it’s all a paper exercise. If the spreadsheet wizards can weave together some documents, one from ABS, one from USCG showing the vessel was seaworthy, the captain and crew qualified, MMCs and so forth it can be shown, on paper, the accident was the crew’s fault. For exa…

[image] Uricanejack: Why not refine it in Alberta and ship light grade refined oil and LNG. excellent point. Madam Premier thinks so too: Notley added her government is close to finalizing investment deals on six projects for partial upgrading of oilsands bitumen that will be worth nearly …

The Canadian Tar Sands hold a huge portion of the World’s proven oil reserves. The technology to cost effectively mine and process bitumen into crude oil continues to improve. Environmentalists absolutely hate Canadian tar sands crude. Most of the objections are to strip mining in the pristine froz…

The Scourge of the American Petroleum Tankers That Prowl the British Columbia Coast - by INGMAR LEE (U.S. ATBs) - #120 by Kennebec_Captain - Professional Mariner Forum

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