INSIDE: AUSTRALIA’S OIL SPILL RESPONSE

BC SHIPPING NEWS

Volume 3 Issue 10

www.bcshippingnews.com

December 2013 / January 2014

Commercial Marine News for Canada’s West Coast.

Industry Insight Captain Bob Shields, President ITB Marine Group

Cargo Logistics

The Role of the Freight Forwarder

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INDUSTRY INSIGHT

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Of legacies and empires Captain Bob Shields, President, ITB Marine Group

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In the case of Island Tug and Barge — or ITB Marine Group as it will soon be known — we learn that son Bob has taken Peter Shields’ legacy and created an ever-expanding empire that continues to influence the West Coast marine industry.

10 BC Shipping News December 2013/January 2014

ingled in with names like McLaren and Allan, you’ll find the name Shields as another that has been integral in shaping the maritime industry in B.C. As the McLarens were instrumental in shipbuilding, and the Allans in naval architecture, the Shields have made their presence best known in the tug and barge industry. In the case of Island Tug and Barge — or ITB Marine Group as it will soon be known — we learn that son Bob has taken Peter Shields’ legacy and created an ever-expanding empire that continues to influence the West Coast marine industry. BCSN: Could you start by telling us how the Shields family got into the marine industry on the B.C. Coast? BS: My father was a civil engineer who got involved in property development in remote locations that needed to be serviced by tug and barge. He found the service unreliable — equipment and material would show up late and/or damaged — and so he went out and bought his own barge in 1964 and by 1966, with three or four barges, he found himself in the tug and barge business and about to build the first of his brand new tugs. One of the things they would do was travel the coast with a little tug and oil barge. He’d fill it up with fuel and send his guys off and tell them not to come back until it was all sold. That’s what got him started in the fuel business — primarily serving logging interests and coastal communities. During the same timeframe, his operations manager overheard a couple of gentlemen talking about the poor service they were getting in their West Coast operations. He went over and introduced himself — turns out it was Imperial Oil and they were looking for someone new to tow their oil barge — and that started what became a 50-year relationship with Imperial Oil. Backing up just a bit — in the late 1950s — my American grandfather had a piece of property on an island in B.C. He and his neighbours wanted telephone service so they would scrounge around for abandoned cables from BC Tel and relocate them. In doing so, they ended up creating an expertise in repairing and deploying submarine cables. This caught the attention of BC Tel who asked them if they would like to service all of BC Tel’s cables. In 1959, that’s what they started doing,

INDUSTRY INSIGHT and BC Hydro came along shortly after that. The submarine cable installation and repair business remains a big part of what we do today. BCSN: At what point did you get involved in the business? BS: I was about 14 — I’d just finished school for the year and was looking forward to another summer with my friends. My dad had other plans however. ‘I don’t think so, Son,’ he said, and threw me onto a tug. That was in late June and I got off just in time to go back to school in the fall. I continued to do that every year. It was actually a great way to spend the summer and by the time I graduated, I could afford to put myself through university. When I finished university (I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the University of Victoria), I had so much sea time built up that I went straight into a Marine College and got my Mate’s ticket. After about a year, I had enough sea time to write my Masters. I sailed for about a year with my Masters and, when one of the guys in the office retired, Dad got me to come ashore. That was in 1987. BCSN: That was about the same time your Dad got involved in Seaspan wasn’t it? BS: Yes, it was close. In 1986, my Dad, along with a group of other businessmen in Vancouver, purchased Seaspan from Imasco who was breaking up the assets of Genstar. Dad became very focused on managing Seaspan and needed someone to come in and run this operation which was then called Shields Navigation. Unlike a lot of people who build their own businesses and can’t let go, he stepped right back and left me alone to run things in my own way. One of his favourite sayings was ‘if you’re falling on your face, at least you’re still moving forward’ and he was great at letting me do that. I had the freedom to do what I wanted but still had him in the background to swat me on the head if I got too far off track. I had a lot of ideas on how to change things and had the freedom to do that. We started to look at upgrading our fleet to get more into the bulk oil side of the business and get away from some of the less profitable activities.

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Peter and Bob Shields working together, circa 1988.

You really have to be focused if you’re going to be in the business of transporting sensitive cargoes like oil. It’s very demanding and you have to be able to demonstrate not just a solid safety record, but forward-looking initiatives in safety management

You really have to be focused if you’re going to be in the business of transporting sensitive cargoes like oil. It’s very demanding and you have to be able to demonstrate not just a solid safety record, but forward-looking initiatives in safety management — something the big oil companies make a priority. Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, we started to grow the bulk oil side of our business. First through towing services under Standard Towing and Shields Navigation, and then, as the oil companies started to move away from owning their own transport assets, we purchased their barges and set up longterm contracts to provide the transportation services under the company name of International Tug and Barge. With ownership of the barges, we were able to grow into areas like South East Alaska and the Puget Sound — it was this U.S. trade that really expanded our market and our capacity considerably. In the mid-1970s, we acquired a log barge in a partnership called Egmont Towing which we operated under the flag of Shields Navigation. Along with the log barge, we acquired a beautiful old tug called the Haida Chieftain but

by the late 1980s found it to be horribly inefficient and so needed a different solution. Instead of just replacing the tug we decided to get a group of mariners together and let them create a new company and build something based on what an employee would want. With the purchase of an ex-Seaspan tug, the Island Warrior, Seatow Marine was created. We rebuilt it, doing one of the first automations of a tug on this coast. We took the manning down from seven to five and that paved the way for a lot more of those to be done here in B.C. Coincidentally to all of this going on, we were looking to start another company and Dad suggested we take over a company name that had been sitting on the shelf at Seaspan called Island Tug and Barge. So we saved the $80 in registration fees and purchased the name from Seaspan for one dollar. That was kind of neat — it was an iconic company, originally based in Victoria and one of the first big towboat companies on the West Coast. We started that one up with a single harbour tug called the Pacific Force which we operated in partnership with Pacific Towing.

December 2013/January 2014 BC Shipping News 11

INDUSTRY INSIGHT

Bob worked cable installations prior to moving to the office.

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I fully expect that, within a few years, there will be a legislated requirement to have an RO in the [Arctic]. We’ll likely pursue that accreditation and set ourselves up as a proper RO.

BCSN: By my count, you’re now up to five companies. BS: Yes and we found very quickly that the administrative work was way too cumbersome. Not only that, but we were losing our brand identification — no one really knew who we were. All of our large bulk oil work was being done through International Tug and Barge which just owned barges and would hire the services of Standard Towing, Seatow, Island Tug and Barge, and Shields Navigation. It got really confusing for people to understand the relationship between all of these companies so we started merging them together. One challenge we ran into was related to the labour makeup — each company had different union representation and

it got pretty messy. At the end of the day, the final merger occurred between Shields Navigation and Island Tug and Barge in 2000 with the Canadian Merchant Service Guild as the sole union representing our workers. That was a changing moment for us. We were now able to focus on our principal business of bulk petroleum transport and strengthen our brand which was all about safety and employee engagement. And of course, throughout it all, we still had our submarine and sub-sea cable work. That’s an area of the company that continues to grow. BCSN: Could you describe the company’s growth in that area? I also understand you’ve started an Arctic operation. BS: Yes, within the last three or four years, we’ve really grown our sub-sea

12 BC Shipping News December 2013/January 2014

business — the submarine cable installation and repairs. We acquired Canpac Divers, as well as the assets from Pirelli Submarine Cables when they shut down their West Coast operation, and we converted one of our older oil barges into a dynamically positioned construction vessel which is used for submarine cable laying and repairs as well as supporting other sub-sea work. Over the last couple of years, we’ve ended up with a number of different business lines, including expansion into the Canadian Arctic. We’re in the process of re-organizing all of these to fall under an umbrella company called ITB Marine Group. We’re moving away from the name Island Tug and Barge — it makes people think we’re on Vancouver Island — and are organizing the business lines into ITB West, ITB North, ITB Subsea, and ITB Fuels. ITB West will cover Island Tug and Barge operations; ITB North is the business line that manages all of our northern operations, anything above 60o latitude; then ITB Subsea is the collection of all our submarine cable business along with Canpac Divers; and ITB Fuels is the fuel reselling and tank farm business. ITB Marine Group deals with those shared services that are common to all of the businesses — our safety management, senior management oversight, accounting, payroll, and any of our maintenance and engineering functions. BCSN: Could you describe your operations in the Arctic? How did that come about? BS: We worked with Northern Transportation Co. Ltd. for a number of years, supporting the work that they were doing. The Island Trader, our ATB (articulated tug barge), did seasonal stints for about five or six seasons, primarily moving petroleum cargoes. We retrofitted another ex-tanker barge into a deck barge, that’s now the ITB Beaufort Sea which supported NTCL’s dry cargo lift. Given that our traditional business on the West Coast is not a largegrowth business, especially if you’re Canadian-flagged and can’t move U.S. cargoes, we were looking for an area to grow and the north was really the only place. We’re not competitive to do

trans-border work because of our high cost so we look for ways to increase our inter-Canadian work. The Arctic is one of those places with a lot of potential growth, both in liquid and mineral resources. We decided we were going to plant the ITB flag up there a few years ago and sent in one of our 25,000-barrel, double-hulled barges — the first into the Western Arctic on a committed basis. We retrofitted our tug, the Cindy Mozel, to ice class and set it up with cold weather equipment. The Arctic has nothing in the way of a committed spill response regime so we retrofitted one of our older tank vessels and outfitted it with skimmers and boom and other pollution response gear and have it based out of Tuktoyaktuk. With this, and all of the other gear we have in the region, we have found ourselves like a mini oil spill response company. And given that there are no permanent salvage capabilities in the north, we also outfitted a container full of cold-water dive suits and salvage equipment and based that in Inuvik so we can deploy our divers and all the equipment to repair a ship or refloat something that’s stranded. BCSN: Do you contract out oil spill response services to other companies just like a Response Organization would? BS: There’s no structured regime in the north right now. An expert panel has been set up to review that but there is no requirement currently to have a relationship with a Response Organization (RO) so there’s no reason for anyone to pay money to have that service available to them. If something happened though, there’s no one else to call — we’re the only ones up there with all of that equipment specifically used for that purpose. I fully expect that, within a few years, there will be a legislated requirement to have an RO in the region. We’ll likely pursue that accreditation and set ourselves up as a proper RO. BCSN: What sort of trends are you seeing in the Arctic? Is there more traffic or an increase in land-based operations using the marine side to get their exports out? BS: Not yet. The first big marineserviced mine shut down last year. It was very promising but it wasn’t a fit for the mining company that owned it December 2013/January 2014 BC Shipping News 13

INDUSTRY INSIGHT

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Peter and Bob at the Island Scout Naming Ceremony, July 12, 2006.

If Canada wants to make use of its northern resource wealth, they will need to get on with it and produce some rules, put in the hardware, and develop the region into a viable shipping destination.

so they closed it down. It’ll come back again but the majority of mines are still shipping out through ice roads or, for some, by lake and inland waterways and then by rail. Eventually, they’ll be back up into the ocean environment so we are investing in the area. We recently bought Horizon Marine’s assets and we’ve leased a number of their shore facilities. We have a base in Tuktoyaktuk, an office and terminal in Inuvik, and a leased terminal in Hay River so we’ve got the Mackenzie River, the Beaufort Sea, and the western Arctic covered. The purchase of Horizon Marine’s assets included a number of river tugs and river barges and we added four new double-hulled oil and deck cargo barges that are capable of operating in both the ocean and river (see page 28 for details). ITB North has gone from really nothing to quite a big organization. BCSN: How long do you think it will be before Arctic activities start really taking off? BS: It depends on who you ask. The northern shipping route on the Russian side is open now and it’s by far the better route — it’s a straight passage with

deep water and no little islands to navigate around. The Russians have made it the law that you have to use their icebreakers if you want to use their route. They’ve got a huge fleet of both conventional and nuclear, very high-class icebreakers and they’re very organized. In contrast, on the Canadian side — the Northwest Passage — you’ve got a lot of areas with shallow water; areas that are yet to be charted and a whole cluster of islands with narrow passages. In addition to that, the Canadian Northwest Passage is one of the last places on earth with multi-year ice — it’s like granite. Long before we see an ice-free Passage in Canada, the polar ice cap is going to be clear, and once that’s clear, why would you go through the Canadian side when you can just go right over the top in a straight line in deep water. So, will the Northwest Passage be a longterm shipping route? No, I don’t think so. I think there will be ships that use it periodically in the summer, but not as a regular shipping route. Now, will Canada’s Arctic be a destination for resource development? Yes. Some of Canada’s northern communities will develop as ports and will

14 BC Shipping News December 2013/January 2014

be used to export Canada’s resources. Russia has been operating in their Arctic region for decades and have a huge commitment to populating their northern regions to develop resource and mineral extraction. Companies like Norilsk Nickel have a fleet of very high-class icebreaking cargo ships that operate autonomously through the region and that’s just one example of many that are working in northern Russia. Canada is just starting to think about it. If Canada wants to make use of its northern resource wealth, they will need to get on with it and produce some rules, put in the hardware, and develop the region into a viable shipping destination. BCSN: What are some of the challenges you have operating in the Arctic? For example, is it hard to get experienced labour? BS: A lot of the crew we have gained their experience in the 1970s and 1980s and there hasn’t been a lot of opportunity in the last 30 years to get that experience. Those guys are getting close to retirement and we do have many young guys coming in that are taking their place. There’s enough labour today to service our current operations but if there was a huge growth spurt, we’d be scrambling. There are other challenges: There’s the ice and the obvious challenges with that; there’s the cold-weather environment and all kinds of issues related to introducing equipment and humans into those conditions; the weather itself can get pretty nasty with horrific winds that come up without warning — the weather forecasting that’s available in the more temperate regions is just not there for the Arctic; there’s poor visibility; no landmarks; very limited satellite availability; and no reliable charting so a lot of the time you’re running on local knowledge. From a business standpoint, you have a very limited season and a lot to do within that season so you have high costs and a very short period of time to recoup those costs. Politics is another challenge — there are a lot of regulations in place that are simply not practical to apply in the Arctic environment. You need different solutions. BCSN: Are you expecting a lot of regulations to come out of the federal

INDUSTRY INSIGHT government’s review of the spill response regime north of 60o? BS: I suspect that’s going to happen. It’s unfortunate that what will likely result will be a political answer to a big noise made by a small number of people. The tanker industry is not just one of the safest shipping modes, but is by far and away one of the safest industries in the world. You can’t find a safer ship than a tanker, and that has principally been achieved by internal regulation by the shipping companies and the oil companies. For me, I see a lot of effort being put into a problem that doesn’t exist when there are a lot of other areas needing attention that aren’t getting it. The only thing for certain is that whatever changes are implemented, it’s going to be very expensive and someone is going to have to pay. Theoretically, it’s the consumer at the end of the line that ultimately pays and they need to realize they can’t have it both ways. Unfortunately, I think that’s where we get ourselves into trouble. There isn’t a good understanding in the general public about what’s really being done in shipping to run a safe, efficient and non-polluting business. On top of

that, you might find people unwilling to work on the ships because if something goes wrong, our society wants to throw them in jail. In Canada, there is a section of the Migratory Bird Act that assigns a criminal penalty together with an automatic guilty conviction. In the industry, this is called a strict liability offence for which there is normally a due diligence defence, but in this case, it carries a criminal penalty and no due diligence defence. As much as I hate to say it, I think people would be crazy to seek a seafaring career under these circumstances. BCSN: Let’s look at other government regulations — do you have any insights into the availability of fuel that meets the sulphur content required for Emission Control Areas? BS: That’s a tough one. Our company uses marine gas oil, (diesel fuel) which meets the requirement for sulphur so it’s not an issue for us. The availability of low sulphur heavy fuel oil is not coming on line the way it was predicted by the regulators — they felt supply would follow demand and it hasn’t. Whether it will or not, I’m not sure. There’s a lot of talk about refiners putting in

de-sulphuring plants but bunker fuel is normally a low-margin residual product. To put extra cost into it will require recouping those costs so the price of bunker will inevitably go up. BCSN: What do you think will happen? BS: I would like to think that they’ll keep on pushing for a higher environmental standard but find a more practical solution to achieving it. In the end, it will ultimately mean an increase in shipping costs which the consumer will pay through higher prices for goods and services. BCSN: What about alternative fuels, like LNG? BS: Liquid natural gas is only practical in certain ships. I think it has certain applications where it’s a good alternative but it isn’t for every ship — it’s not practical for smaller vessels because of the cryogenic tanks required. They need constant monitoring and they’re huge and can’t fit on smaller vessels. Having said that, I hear that Westport Innovations and Robert Allan Ltd. are working on a concept for an LNG-escort tug, so we’ll see. For something like a ferry — a big ship on a short run with the ability

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INDUSTRY INSIGHT

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We do a poor job of promoting marine trades as a viable vocation... we don’t make a big noise about who we are, what we do, and what we offer, and we need to change this.

to fuel frequently, it makes sense. It makes sense based on the price of gas today but if the price were to triple, would it still make sense? I don’t know. Another alternative is methanol — it’s much easier to convert to — you don’t need special tanks and the engines convert very easily. I’m not sure whether you get enough energy out of methanol to be able to store enough for long-range voyages but it is certainly another possible solution. Other alternatives, like solar or wind, are being played around with but generally, in shipping, the demand is for just-in-time deliveries and shipping needs to be able to respond to that. A container ship has to be able to deliver from Asia to North America in a threeweek period or you don’t fit that current model. Slow steaming works but only when there’s a huge amount of extra tonnage. BCSN: How are the various trends in the industry affecting ITB’s fleet?

BS: We will be re-investing in our fleet to move to dedicated articulated tug-barge units. We’re going to retrofit our liquid vessel barges to dedicated pushers so they’ll all be ATBs. In our domestic trade, the primary advantage is that you can separate the two so they are regulated separately. Regulations like manning are more suitable for the type of coastal operations we do and provide for lower costs. As for the design specifications on those tugs, we’re looking to make them much more friendly to attract anybody to the industry, including mixed-gender crews. We don’t think it should be a predominantly male-oriented industry so we want to make sure the vessel accommodates that. We also want to address noise — we want quiet ships that are comfortable and take advantage of all of the technologies available today. We don’t want a complicated ship but we do want one that’s more technically advanced and more automated. We’d

About Bob Shields

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ob Shields’ career in the marine industry began at the age of 14 working on tugs up and down the B.C. Coast for Shields Navigation, the family business. After achieving a Bachelor of Science in Economics at the University of Victoria, Bob pursued his Masters ticket which he received in the mid-1980s. By 1987, Bob was running Shields Navigation and, although father Peter was keeping a close watch, was given the freedom to expand operations and pursue new business opportunities, turning Island Tug and Barge into one of the largest tug and barge operations on the West Coast. Bob is currently the Chair of the Council of Marine Carriers. The Council’s role is to formulate and advocate policies, legis- Bob with daughters Josie and Sydney. lation and regulations that are beneficial to the tug and barge industry. The Council of Marine Carriers represents the membership in all matters before the appropriate governmental and industrial agencies. 16 BC Shipping News December 2013/January 2014

like to build in features that unload the crew from all the duties required for older vessels and give them time to do what they’re supposed to do— i.e., safely deliver our cargoes. Generally, within Western Canada, there’s going to be continued interest in ship-docking and ship-escort services so you’ll see more high-spec vessels being built to serve that market. If the LNG plants get off the ground, there will have to be some pretty fancy terminal escort tugs involved with that. For the coastal transport sector, we really have become an industry that works around the Gulf of Georgia Basin and not much further. West Coast operators have a very high cost of operation so to try to take our industry beyond Canadian borders is difficult. There are a lot of changes needed to address labour agreements that haven’t kept pace with either current labour practices or business models. Trade unions that represent mariners on the West Coast need to start building a group of professional mariners that are sought after globally, much like the old brick layer guilds where accreditation had meaning. Unions should be focusing on training and professionalism rather than how much extra an employee can get for dental care. The trade unions in the U.S. made that shift decades ago to the point now that they own the training institutes. BCSN: For coastal operations, what sort of trends are you seeing in the movement of cargoes? Do you have an opinion on short sea shipping? BS: I’ve been watching short sea shipping for almost 20 years — it’s time will come. Our roadways and our railways cannot support the amount of traffic that is on them today and a different solution is needed. We have an ocean highway that’s very under-utilized and the key is to change the mindset away from the just-in-time delivery model that is keeping the trucking industry active. Not only can short sea shipping move a huge tonnage of cargo for a very low dollar cost but the amount of horsepower to take 5,000 tonnes of cargo from Vancouver Port to up the valley for distribution, is about the same as two trucks. So you’re moving much more cargo with a fraction of the

INDUSTRY INSIGHT emissions and consumption of fuel. It is a practical solution that just needs a catalyst. BCSN: What about trends in labour? You mentioned a desire to recruit more women — how’s that going? BS: We haven’t really embarked on recruiting women yet — we want to have the vessels first before we head down that road. We do have women working on the shore-side though. Generally, the majority of people that come to work here have chosen the industry because they know someone already in it. We don’t find a lot of younger people coming out of school who want to be a tugboat captain. It’s just not on their radar. We do a poor job of promoting marine trades as a viable vocation. When I say we, I mean all of us in the industry; we don’t make a big noise about who we are, what we do, and what we offer, and we need to change this. BCSN: With the automation of tugs and the reduced manning that came with it, do you see a gap in the skills required? BS: It does create a bit of a problem — because we have smaller crews, there aren’t any extra positions on board that can be used for training. Typically, on ocean-going vessels, all the lower positions are training positions. For coastal work, you can’t afford that. To give you an example of the difference in cost — we had a big offshore tug with a crew of 13. The total cost of that crew of 13 — and they’re well paid — was roughly the equivalent of a four-man coastal tug. It’s two and a half times more expensive to run a tug domestically on the West Coast than it is to run one offshore. It’s huge and as a result of that, you can’t afford to have any position on board that isn’t absolutely necessary. BCSN: Do you see a solution? BS: We’ve been very fortunate in that we’ve been able to groom a number of younger people. We have three in-house operating trainers and then one ashore that manages that. To be in charge of a tank barge’s loading and discharge operation, a new employee will spend an intensive three to six months training under another tanker man and then after that, they go through another two years of being shadowed.

What we do is fairly unique in the industry — we go after the niche market so we’re doing a lot of different things that attract new employees. We also feed a lot of people to the pilots. The experience they gain while they’re here is very beneficial to moving on to that final plateau of becoming a BC Coast Pilot which is the utopia for a B.C. towboat operator.

In terms of a solution, I’d like to see a way to do more within the confines of the economics that we face. I think a lot of it has to do with the inflexibility contained in the current labour collective agreement. There’s a lot of ways to do more without costing more. It just requires people to embrace change which is often difficult but necessary. BCSN

About ITB

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TB is the end result of the creation and merger of a number of marine companies established by the Shields Family but primarily rooted in the family’s original company, Shields Navigation. Shields Navigation had served industry and communities along the Pacific Coast since 1965, delivering fuel and deck cargoes as well as supplying submarine cable laying and repair services. Today, the main focus of operations concentrates on bulk fuel delivery, underwater cable installations, general towing, and barge services and has operations along the West Coast from Alaska to California and in the Canadian Arctic and McKenzie River. “Our strength comes from within,” says President, Captain Bob Shields, “employee involvement is encouraged and welcomed, and in all ways sets the tone for the image that the company portrays. Our goal is one of operational excellence and enthusiastic achievement.” ITB’s vessels are known for their innovative design and attention to safety. ITB is voluntarily compliant with the ISM Code (the International Safety Management Code) and is ISO 9001 certified through Lloyds Register. Recognizing their commitment to marine safety and environmental stewardship, ITB was the first tug and barge company to be awarded the Exceptional Compliance Program Award (ECOPRO) from the Washington State Department of Ecology in 2005 for their voluntary prevention planning standard. “We’re proud and privileged to be a part of the ECOPRO program,” said Captain Shields. “Because it’s voluntary, we find it has greater meaning and value — it’s something we do because we choose to do it rather than being forced through regulation.” ITB also received a legacy award from the B.C./States Oil Spill Task Force for their work in oil spill response and safety management. They continue to participate in OSR exercises with key response agencies from both Canada and the U.S.

For more information, please visit: www.islandtug.com

Photo courtesy of Carolyn Matt, ITB Marine Group

December 2013/January 2014 BC Shipping News 17