Capt. Stephen Brown spent 21 years at sea, including the last five as a Master, before coming ashore for operational management roles for Gearbulk Shipping in South Africa, Indonesia, China, the UK and Vancouver. He was appointed President of the Chamber of Shipping of British Columbia in 2008. He joined us to talk about the Chamber’s role in the BC marine industry as well as port activity and tanker movement.

Who does the Chamber represent?

The Chamber of Shipping has been around since 1923. Altogether we have about 180 members, roughly half are principal members, the ship owners and the (ship) agents.

Associate members are the ports, the marine pilots, the Pacific Pilotage Authority, the maritime lawyers, the classification societies, marine surveyors, repair companies, service companies, towboat companies, some of the terminals and so on.

One of the Chamber’s roles is to ensure members get a good bang for the buck — fees to the Coast Guard, fees to Transport Canada, fees to the ports and fees to the pilots. Ship owners have to work quite hard for their money and we want to make sure we get value for that money.

How many ports on the BC coast are Chamber members involved with?

Our members are the entire coast, starting up in Stewart, all the way down to Vancouver and everything in between. In fact, some of our most active members are the ports themselves — Prince Rupert, Port Alberni, Nanaimo, Victoria and Port Metro Vancouver.

We see big freighters anchored in English Bay and the Inner Harbour. Does that mean Port Metro Vancouver is congested?

Vancouver is a busy port and during the height of the grain season, it’s quite normal to have 30 to 40 ships waiting. We are trying to squeeze more and more agricultural products through our terminals year-on-year and we have been a bit behind on the investment we need for those terminals to efficiently handle that increase.

While there is more and more cargo moving through, the number of ships is actually static or even slightly falling because the ships servicing these trades are actually bigger.

Would extra ship traffic in the Port be manageable?

We have a great deal of room to grow before traffic density becomes an issue. Regionally, we actually have some of the lowest density of marine traffic anywhere in the developed world. Port Metro Vancouver receives just over 3,000 vessels a year. The Port of Prince Rupert is receiving less than 500. Rotterdam currently averages around 36,000 port calls — vessels — per year. The Port of Singapore in 2014 handled 140,000 vessels, which means that a ship is arriving every five minutes. While our ports are not destined to become as busy as Rotterdam or Singapore in future, they can certainly manage more traffic quite easily.

How much will ship traffic expand in the Port in the foreseeable future?

When it comes to the container ships, the growth is going to be at Roberts Bank Container Terminal Two. If approved, that’s going to be three berths with about 2.4 million twenty-foot equivalent container units.

Growth in coal will come from Neptune Terminal on the North Shore. It currently does eight to nine million tonnes a year. With the investments Neptune is making, the company figures it will ultimately finish up with about 18 million tonnes of capacity.

The other one is the investment at Pacific Coast Terminal in Port Moody. There is a new investment in potash handling, which will be a further two million tonnes a year.

How much of an effect would the Trans Mountain Expansion Project have on ship traffic?

We are anticipating that if the project gains regulatory approval, Westridge will go from approximately one ship a week to one ship a day. That theoretically could be around 350-360 ships a year. The Kinder Morgan project would not represent more than 10 per cent of total shipping in and out of the Port of Vancouver at today’s levels. And, assuming that other products increase, it will actually fall to below 10 per cent.

Is it correct to say that tankers are held to a higher standard while navigating Port Metro Vancouver compared to other types of vessels?

It’s true, but it’s not unique to Port Metro Vancouver. That is very much the way of things in the world. When it comes to oversight, monitoring, inspections or tug escort of vessels anywhere in the world, you will see higher priority and a higher level of attention paid to tankers.

Was the Chamber satisfied with the response to the recent fuel spill in English Bay?

I think it’s almost unprecedented that 90 per cent of the oil that was estimated to have been in the water was actually recovered. That’s a fantastic achievement based on the rapid mobilization of Western Canada Marine Response’s reaction.

What I’d like to say however is that we have been in discussion with the federal government about spill response for the last four years. There was a panel report published in 2011. We, as industry, have recognized the Canadian spill response prevention, preparedness and response did have some areas that could benefit from improvement. We have also made it very clear we are prepared to contribute financially to those improvements because our ability to do business is directly linked to the ability of a port to do business, which comes down ultimately to having social license to do business.