PRINCE RUPERT: A Canadian Coast Guard vessel continued to slowly tow a disabled Russian container ship carrying hundreds of tons of fuel away from British Columbia’s pristine northern coast on Saturday.

The move significantly lessened the threat of the ship running aground, hitting the rocks and causing a spill. The Canadian Forces’ joint rescue coordination center said the Russian carrier Simushir lost power off Haida Gwaii, also known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, as it made its way from Everett in Washington state to Russia.

Acting Sub. Lt. Ron MacDougall said the Coast Guard ship Gordon Reid secured a towline and the two vessels were moving away from the coastline at two knots in 3 to 4-meter swells.

Officials said the outcome was subject to weather, but the danger has been lessened. MacDougall said the ship, originally nine miles offshore, is now 23 miles offshore.

He said the Canadian Coast Guard vessel Sir Wilfrid Laurier and US Coast Guard cutter Spar are there to provide assistance but they haven’t yet been needed.

The ocean going tug Barbara Foss was also due to arrive later Saturday morning. “The further they get away from the coast and the nearer the larger tug gets the better,” MacDougall said.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper tweeted his thanks for the “great work” the Gordon Reid ship is doing off the coast. The ship was drifting northwest in stormy seas Friday, away from shore, after losing power late Thursday, officials said. The fear of oil spills is especially acute in British Columbia, where residents remember the Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989.

Such worries have fed fierce opposition — particularly from environmentalists and Canada’s native tribes — to a current proposal to build a pipeline that would carry oil from Canada’s Alberta oil sands to a terminal in Kitimat, British Columbia, on the Pacific Coast for shipment to Asia.

Opponents say the proposed pipeline would bring about 220 large oil tankers a year to the province’s coast. The president of the Council of the Haida Nation had warned on Friday that a storm coming into the area was expected to push the ship onto the rocky shore, but later President Pete Lantin said their worst fears have subsided.

“If the weather picks up it could compromise that, but as of right now there is a little sense of relief that we might have averted catastrophe here,” Lantin said.About 5,000 people live on the island and fish for food nearby, Lantin said.

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2014