Tanker runs aground in Northwest Passage off Canada

BBC News 2 Sep 10;

A tanker carrying 9m litres (2.4m gallons) of diesel fuel has run aground off the coast of northern Canada, the Canadian Coast Guard has said.

The Nanny, owned by Woodward's Oil, hit a sandbar on Wednesday in the Northwest Passage, near the village of Gjoa Haven in the Nunavut federal territory.

No diesel is believed to have been spilt, Coast Guard officials said.

The authorities are working with Woodward's Oil to attempt to float the tanker off the sandbar, they added.

"The Coast Guard ship Henry Larsen has just entered the area. I believe it's at anchor just off of Gjoa Haven as we speak," Larry Trigatti, an environmental response official with the Coast Guard, told CBC News.

"It's monitoring the situation by helicopter. As you can imagine, there are some shoals [sandbars] in the area, so we want to be very careful in going into that zone," he added.

Officials said it was too early to tell when the tanker, which was supplying remote communities in the region, would be able to move again.

The Nanny is a modern double-hulled product tanker, according to the coast guard.

A cruise ship exploring the Northwest Passage also ran aground last week when it hit an uncharted rock off Nunavut.

Gjoa Haven, or Uqsuqtuuq in the Inuktitut language, is the only settlement on King William Island.

The Northwest Passage is one of the most fabled sea routes in the world - the most direct shipping route from Europe to Asia through the Canadian Arctic. Historically, it is ice-bound throughout the year.