Seaspan’s Vancouver Drydock will leverage its hometown advantage as it competes against two European shipyards for a B.C. Ferries retrofit project that involves converting two larger vessels to liquefied natural gas capability.
Seaspan has been shortlisted for the Spirit Class ferries mid-life upgrade project, along with shipyards in Poland and Italy, B.C. Ferries announced late last week.
Converting the ships to include LNG is part of the company’s plan to use more economical and environmentally friendly fuel sources.
In the last fiscal year, B.C. Ferries spent $125 million in fuel costs, 15 per cent of which was eaten up by the two Spirit Class vessels.
Seaspan president Brian Carter said the LNG conversion and retrofit project would be welcomed by the Lower Lonsdale-based drydock and could potentially employ 150 people over a four-year period. Investing to modernize Vancouver Drydock is something Seaspan is willing to consider if awarded the B.C. Ferries contract.
“Well, that’s a large project, and since it’s LNG it’s connecting to the future,” said Carter. “So, we want to build our LNG capability to support vessels that will operate on LNG in the future, because we think that is the wave of the future.”
Seaspan is no stranger to B.C. Ferries, having worked on many projects for the ferry company including recently building a new cable ferry to service the Buckley Bay to Denman Island route.
Being located in B.C. Ferries’ backyard, said Carter, is another potential advantage Seaspan has over the European shipyards in the bidding process.
“But on a very large project price is very important … so we have got to put our best foot forward and make sure we are delivering the best value we can to B.C. Ferries,” said Carter.
There is undoubtedly some extra costs involved in shipping a ferry back and forth between B.C. and Europe, added Carter, which is a factor B.C. Ferries will have to consider before the company selects the winning shipyard in late fall of this year.
The retrofit project was initially scheduled to start in late 2016 but has been pushed back a year as B.C. Ferries takes some extra time to work out the engineering details for the highly complex project.
The ships to be converted to LNG are the Spirit of Vancouver Island and Spirit of B.C. which service the Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay route.
