TEMP awards contract to KOTUG offer escort towage

Trans Mountain, on behalf of shippers for the Trans Mountain Expansion Project (TMEP), awarded KOTUG Canada Inc. a long-term contract to provide escort towage services for tankers that load crude oil at Trans Mountain’s Westridge Marine Terminal.

Trans Mountain operates Canada’s only oil pipeline servicing the West Coast of Canada providing tidewater access to foreign markets for Canada’s petroleum resources.

Under the agreement, KOTUG Canada, which is a partnership between KOTUG International B.V. and Canada’s Horizon Maritime Services Ltd., will escort tankers from the harbor limits of the Port of Vancouver to the Pacific Ocean, through the commercial shipping lanes of the Salish Sea. To provide this service, KOTUG Canada has partnered with Sc’ianew First Nation from Beecher Bay, strategically located along the shipping route.

KOTUG Canada will provide the service using two newbuild dual fuel, methanol and diesel, escort tugs designed by Robert Allan Ltd., a naval architect firm based in Vancouver, BC. These are the first vessels of this kind for Canada’s West Coast. The escort tugs are being purpose built by SANMAR Shipyards in Turkey. The design for these tugs provides significant environmental benefits to further reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and underwater noise. The tugs are equipped with firefighting and spill response capabilities and will help to mitigate the risk of marine spills to the Salish Sea and communities from laden tankers as well as other commercial marine traffic.

The newbuild vessels will replace the existing tugs selected for TMEP announced by KOTUG Canada with the Sc’ianew First Nation in December 2021. Together, with a third existing KOTUG Canada vessel on long term contract to Western Canada Marine Response Corporation (WCMRC), the vessels will operate out of the Cheanuh Marina in Beecher Bay on the south coast of Vancouver Island, owned and operated by the Sc’ianew First Nation.

Both vessels will be equipped with a mechanical cross link system (the latest SCHOTTEL SYDRIVE azimuth thrusters) to enable a single engine to drive two thrusters, significantly reducing fuel consumption. Additionally, the hulls of the two tugs will have a graphene paint applied (from Graphite Innovation Technologies, GIT) to reduce biofouling and enhance hull-smoothness of the vessels which reduces underwater radiant noise and makes the vessels more fuel efficient.