East Coast - countdown

 The tanker East Coast arrived today, January 8, at Irving Oil's Woodside terminal with more product from the Saint John refinery. This may be one of the ship's last calls in Halifax as its replacement is due sometime in the first quarter of this year.

Irving Oil has entered into a long term charter arrangement with Algoma Tankers Ltd for two new 37,000 dwt ships to replace East Coast and Acadian to trade under the Canadian flag. 

East Coast was delivered in March 2005 by Hyundai Mipo as a 23,552 gt, 37,515 dwt product tanker. It was initially named Nor'Easter and flew the Marshall Islands flag, trading out of Saint John to ports on the US east coast. In 2014 it was brought under Canadian flag and reanmed East Coast. Another ship, the similar sized former Iver Progress, built in 2007, joined the fleet in 2016 and was given the name Nor'easter, with Marshall Islands registry.

Reports indicate that the new ships, of essentially the same size, and also built by Hyundai Mipo, will be named Algoma East Coast and Algoma Acadian. They will be "methanol ready" as that fuel seems to be the fuel of the future, although there is no ready source for the stuff as yet.

The East Coast and the other members of the Irving Oil charter fleet, were retrofitted with exhaust gas scrubbers which are housed in large appendages to their orginal funnels. Presumably the new ships will be built to use low sulfur fuels (which Irving Oil produces) at first and will not have scrubbers. (Some ports have banned scrubbers, particularly the open loop type.)

East Coast was retro-fitted with an exhaust gas scrubber in 2015. 

(August 20, 2022 photo)

The other two Marshall Islands flag sister ships in the Irving Oil charter fleet, New England and Great Eastern will also be coming up for renewal surveys in the fall of 2025, but there has been no word on replacements (at least to my ear). 

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