Energy News: Super tugboats being designed for Northern Gateway tanker traffic

Robert Allan Ltd., is designing the new RAstar Raincoast Guardian series of super-tugboats.

A Vancouver-based marine engineering and naval architectural firm, Robert Allan Ltd., is busy these days designing the new RAstar Raincoast Guardian series of super-tugboats.

The new tugs are being especially designed to escort tankers carrying oil from the Northern Gateway pipeline.

The new tugs are expected to carry a price tag of $30 million each, about triple the normal cost of a smaller, regular tugboat. The Robert Allan company has designed and sold 100’s high capacity tugboats to service the oil and gas industry around the world.

“What an escort (tugboat) has to be able to do is take control of a disabled tanker in an extreme situation and exercise both steering and braking controls over that tanker so, ideally, it doesn’t go aground,” Robert Allan, company principal told the BIV newspaper.

The Raincoast Guardian tugs would not only be state-of the-art but 50 metres longer that a conventional tug and be powered by a 10,000 horsepower power plant.

The new tugs, according to the company, “will dwarf any existing tugs on the B.C. coast.”