Posted on June 13, 2018
By Chris Shannon, Cape Breton Post
Provincial Energy Ventures Ltd. is finally taking a step toward expansion of its bulk material transshipment facility at Sydney harbour.
A request for proposals has been issued by the company for dredging services, with a deadline to submit proposals of June 28. It was in 2012 that Provincial Energy Ventures president Ernie Thrasher announced the facility would undergo a multi-year $75-million expansion.
According to the advertised request for proposals, the intention is to deepen the approach to the Provincial Energy Ventures dock to match the harbour navigation channel, which underwent a $38-million dredge in 2011.
The current “dredge window” is described as permitting the work to begin as early as July 30 this year to as late as Nov. 29, 2019.
Provincial Energy Ventures general manager Jimmy Graham said coal production from the Kameron Collieries-operated Donkin Mine is partly behind the move to start the process of dredging at the dock.
“In order to get any larger vessels in it had to be dredged, and with the Donkin coal ramping up (production), there’s going to be a need to move larger vessels in and out of the harbour,” Graham said Wednesday.
The coal is trucked to the bulk transshipment facility where it is stockpiled awaiting export. The processed Donkin coal can be sold either as a low ash, high-energy thermal coal and/or as a high-quality metallurgical coal.
The dredged material comprising organic silt and fine sand will be used as infill at the company’s on-site “confined disposal field.” Graham said the project will ultimately allow for a maximum storage capacity of 700,000 tonnes of bulk aggregate on site.
The facility would be able to ship about three million tonnes of coal per year. Most of the coal has been shipped from mines in Pennsylvania and West Virginia to Provincial Energy’s transshipment facility, where the coal is then loaded on to smaller vessels headed to the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Great Lakes region.
Graham said the current depth of a vessel’s hull cannot exceed 11.58 metres at high tide.
By dredging the approximately 210,000 cubic metres of material from the dock to the harbour navigation channel, at an average depth of one metre, it will allow much larger ships to dock, even at low tide.
“We want it deeper at berth (18.5 metres) so … we can still be loading at low tide and the vessel would sail on high tide to get the maximum depth out of the harbour,” he said.
Graham said the company is hoping to co-ordinate its dredging project with the work that will begin this summer on the construction of a second cruise ship berth at the Sydney Marine Terminal.
About 30,000 cubic metres will be dredged from the second berth site and a much smaller amount of material will be removed at the south end of the existing dock at the marine terminal.
Engineering firm CBCL Ltd. is overseeing both projects, but manager Richard Morykot said he wasn’t in a position to comment without his clients’ approval.
Even when the Provincial Energy Ventures dredging project is completed, larger vessels won’t be docking anytime soon until a resolution can be found with the realignment of navigation aids in the harbour. The cost to realign the navigation markers to the deeper channel is estimated at $3.5 million.
“The navigation lights need to be put in place before large vessels can come in to use the channel,” said Graham.
The Canadian Coast Guard has said it is working with the Port of Sydney Development Corp. and other stakeholders to find a solution to the problem.
Source: Herald Business
