First of 3 electric tugs delivered to Canada

Sanmar has delivered the first of three electric tugs to HaiSea Marine, which will operate the tug at LNG Canada’s remote LNG export facility in British Columbia.

Haisea Wamis is the first electric tug in Canada, and was based on a design by naval architects Robert Allan, who attended the naming of all five vessels in Istanbul in May.

Based on the ElectRA 2800SX, Haisea Wamis will be joined by sister vessels Haisea Wee’git and Haisea Brave, names which all refer to the indigenous population in Canada.

They are 28.4m in length with a beam of 13m and contain a 6MWh battery storage system that will be used during berthing operations at the harbour in Kitimat, where there is plenty of electricity available to recharge from the region’s hydroelectric dams,

Two other tugs were also ordered from Sanmar as a result of the HaiSea joint venture between shipyard owner and shipbuilder Seaspan and the Haisla Nation, an indigenous Canadian community in Kitimat, British Columbia, where LNG Canada, which is 40% owned by Shell along with Petronas (25%), PetroChina (15%), Mitsubishi (15%) and Kogas (5%), has its LNG production plant.

The two other two vessels are large, LNG-fuelled RAstar 4000-DF escort tugs with 100tbp and theyt will be Canada’s most powerful escort tugs.

They will contain 57m3 of LNG along with 324m3 of diesel, and will be used to escort liquefied natural gas carriers from LNG Canada’s production facility 159nm up the Douglas Channel to port, where they will switch to the smaller, fully electric tugs to carry out the harbour operations.

“The delivery of Haisea Wamis marks a major stride along the road to a sustainable, environmentally-friendly tug and towing industry and we are proud to be leading from the front, working closely with our partners to put innovative ideas into action through technological advance,” said Sanmar chairman Ali Gürün. “The significance of this project is huge, not just for us, but for the industry that we work in as a whole.”