No one is suggesting that Enbridge's oil tankers, carting Alberta's petroleum resources to foreign ports of call, should be denied by a fellow province.... accept by Premier Christy Clark. No one is suggesting that these huge oil tankers will be making a U-Turn in Douglas and Principe Channels, nor is there a suggestion that they will be running these ships at open Pacific Ocean speed.
Many, actually all of the images that Enbridge has produced for public consumption, show our British Columbian waters as idyllic (extremely happy, peaceful, or picturesque).
Enbridge promises that there will be two tugs assisting the tanker(s) from the Pacific Ocean to Kitimat empty, save for ballast..... and again from Kitimat to the open Pacific Ocean, fully loaded with sand laden with oil.
One tug, as depicted in the cartoon below is to the Port of the slow moving tanker. The second tug is Astern of the tanker and that tug is reversing the whole distance from the Pacific to Kitimat and back again.... under idyllic coastal water conditions. We know the Astern tug is in reverse because the sharp pointy end of a boat, the Bow is going in the opposite direction as the vessel that it's tied to. The blunt end is called the Stern and it's facing the Stern of the oil tanker. This method, that Enbridge has displayed in their artist rendering, this Cartoon, below, is a sure-fire way to send many a good seamen to their watery graves. The steel hulled Tug, NOT DOUBLE HULLED, will reach the bottom of either of the two channels, before you can utter.... Holy-cow. Plus if there is a rescue attempt made, it will be akin to the demise of the Atlantic Convoy stragglers. The "other" tug, in this case, couldn't leave their charge, the massive oil tanker, alone in treacherous waters!
Because of their huge mass, tankers have a large inertia, making them very difficult to steer. A loaded supertanker could take as much as 4 to 8 kilometers and 15 minutes to come to a full stop and has a turning diameter of about 2 kilometers.
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| EVEN the tugs, will have Quieter Engines |
Here in Vancouver, Canada, ships entering our Harbour have
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| Everest Spirit |
And if you missed the headline August 23, 2012, Globe and Mail:
Last but not the Least, of importance is this handy-dandy booklet that we found by using this search criteria in Google: how powerful has a tug got to be to stop an oil tanker"The ship currently docked at Kitimat looking like a prizefighter with a broken nose is an ugly reminder of the threat posed by proposed pipelines and tanker traffic to the territory of the Gitga'at First Nation," said the statement issued by the band, which is based in Hartley Bay, on Douglas Channel.
Retard Assist Page 21 of 154
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12 knots = 13.8094 mph = 22.224 km/h
C = 8,485.28 Feet
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Something else you should be looking at, is the speed of an Oil Tanker out in open Pacific Ocean:
12 knots = 13.8094 mph = 22.224 km/h
To put this all in perspective, British Columbians have heard about the BC Ferry system which run out of Horseshoe Bay and over to Departure Bay is 23 knots pushing 10,034 tonnes along..... those Oil tankers, the ones plying to and fro our coastal waters, like a Suezmax Tanker, Loaded, to 125,000 dwt is TWELVE times larger, in weight, than a BC Ferry... built in Germany.
Enbridges says in their "cartoon" up top that "tankers travel slowly but the speed will be reduced".
The speed of the Tanker isn't the problem here, it's the stopping, or Retarding capabilities like this vessel travelling at 12 knots (Pages 57, 58, 59 of 154): 854.3 feet long etc
"Retarding Maneuver", NOT stopping, means that this particular vessel, with Rudder problems, will travel 6,000 feet forward, and another 6,000 feet to Starboard.... but on the diagonal..... Hmmmm where did we leave our Grade 8 Math of Pythagoras Theorem?
I had read. Kitimat Port being a Northern Port, has really nasty weather. There are frequent, hurricane force winds. Waves 30 to 50 feet high. There are rogue waves, as high as a four story building. The channel narrow, the tankers massive. The huge tankers do have to make hairpin turns, to get around all of the many islands. And, as you say, it takes a lot of distance to turn the tankers. It takes miles for one of those behemoth tankers, to get stopped. In one of BC's massive storms. The tankers would be smashed against the rocks. The channel is narrow, because of the underwater rock ledges in the channel.
ReplyDeleteIn the spring. There were three freighters caught, in one of the horrendous storms. The storm tore the top load of logs off one freighter. They had to put out a distress call. If the bottom load shifted, the ship would capsize. It took hours for Search and Rescue, to reach the stricken ship in that storm. The other freighters, also lost their cargo to the storm and into the sea it went. They had to turn back and pray, they could reach safe harbor on BC's coast.
The Valdez tanker spill, is a teacup spill compared to, one of those massive tankers from China. There is still oil gathering on the rocks, from the Vadez spill, over 22 years ago.
The Bitumen is loaded with lethal chemicals, to make the dirty oil flow freely in the pipeline. This venture is asinine, in every which way.
I am not trying to defend taking supertankers into Kitimat, but....
ReplyDeleteThere are no hairpin turns required to go from Hecate Straight to Kitimat. There are 90 degree turns, but no 180 degree turns.
In the transition from Hecate Straight to the channels to Kitimat, there are passageways lined with shallows, but once into the channels, there are almost no shallows lining the channel. For the most part when you are 100 feet from shore, you are in 100+ feet of water and when in the middle you are in 500+ feet of water.
Hecate Straight can be really nasty with very strong winds and very high waves, but the channels inside will have much reduced winds and waves. The winds wil go either up the channel or down it, not across it.
We tried doing a comparison screen shot of the narrowest of approaches to Kitimat and Puget Sound, but, because we don't have Google Earth PRO we can't set the "Eye Alt" at a precise number. To be able to do so, it would be a Global setting, no matter where we would go it would, theoretically, be the same SCALE.
ReplyDeleteNot quite navigational, but ...
As to 180 degrees, we weren't suggesting that. Our concern has more to do with the What Ifs, as in Rudder failure, engine failure, weather failure for a slow moving vessel of the size that Enbridge will be using in BC Coastal Waters.
The comparison between the two Approaches might show that Puget Sound is in fact a wider approach than Kitimat's and if so, then the need for greater care would require more support vessels. If one Tug is knocked out of commission, will the other Tug suffice?
huge tanker ships, such as suggested, will require a min. of 3 tugs & I'd want 4. You never know when one is going to break down. We have winter storms which turn the oceans to something like a blender. Such large ships, with such dangerous cargos can not be sent up & down our coast. There will be accidents, that is why they are called that. The repercussions won't be worth all the money in the world.\
ReplyDeletethese corporations are just interrested in making money, not in our enviornment. I don't buy anything they are trying to sell us about how good they are going to make our enviornment. You can have all the money in the world but if you don't have clean land & water just where are you going to live, eat, drink, et.c