Crude oil tankers sit docked at the Westridge Marine Terminal in Burnaby, B.C., November, 2025. The tankers from L-R are New Alliance, Yu Fu Zuo, and Navig8 Precision.Jimmy Jeong/The Globe and Mail
After loading at Trans Mountain’s Westridge Terminal in Burnaby, the crude oil tanker New Alliance departed for the port of Ningbo-Zhoushan, China on Jan. 7, 2025. Instead of heading directly across the Pacific, however, it went north along British Columbia’s coast, threading between Haida Gwaii and the mainland before turning west to the open Pacific.
This path runs through the coastal waters that are protected by Canada’s Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, but the vessel loaded with up to 550,000 barrels of crude oil from Alberta, broke no law.
The moratorium, which could be amended or repealed if Alberta and Ottawa reach an agreement under a memorandum of understanding signed last fall for a possible new oil pipeline to the West Coast, is widely misunderstood.
The oil tanker moratorium is not, as the name implies, a tanker ban. It prevents large oil tankers from loading or unloading at the two deep-water ports on B.C.’s north coast – Kitimat and Prince Rupert. Passed into law in 2019, it established a barrier to building a pipeline to either port for Alberta oil, by prohibiting tankers with more than 12,500 tonnes of crude or other heavy oil as cargo from stopping, loading, or unloading at ports or marine installations in the north coast region. It covers an area from the northern tip of Vancouver Island to the southern tip of Alaska.
A change to the law is necessary for a pipeline extension to B.C.’s north coast, and it is still unclear whether Alberta, Ottawa, as well as First Nations leaders, can agree on terms that would persuade the federal government to amend or lift the moratorium.
The waters covered by the moratorium – Queen Charlotte Sound, Hecate Strait and Dixon Entrance – are often treacherous, especially during the winter storm season. The Liberal government enacted the moratorium following a 2015 election promise to protect the coast from the risk of a catastrophic oil spill.
“The thought of this pristine ecosystem being fouled by oil pollution is simply intolerable,” said Marc Garneau, then Canada’s minister of transportation, when he introduced Bill C‑48 to a parliamentary committee in 2017. “These strong measures against potential oil pollution are what Canadians want and expect.”
At the time, Bill C-48 sounded the final death knell for Enbridge Inc.’s Northern Gateway pipeline, which would have opened up a new path for Alberta oil sands to Asian markets. Since then, the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project that crosses southern B.C. has tripled the capacity for Alberta oil to tidewater, but the moratorium still stands in the way of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s ambitions for a new pipeline across northern B.C.
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The MOU includes dozens of provisions and compromises that must be met to lessen the environmental impact of the energy sector while giving Alberta more jurisdiction over how that will be done. Ms. Smith said this week she expects all of the details to be worked out by June.
The proposed pipeline is still without private-sector investment or a defined route, however.
B.C. Premier David Eby opposes any pipeline project that would require lifting the federal moratorium. He has said a further expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline to Burnaby, B.C., from Alberta is a more “realistic” option.
In January, Prime Minister Mark Carney travelled to B.C.’s north coast to meet with the region’s Indigenous leaders. He offered to fund a marine traffic risk assessment study, which has not yet started, and promised to seek their consent before approving a new pipeline plan. The chiefs, however, maintain that their communities will not accept any changes to the moratorium that would allow Alberta to export oil from the port at Prince Rupert.
When the New Alliance departed the Westridge terminal with its load of Alberta crude in early January, 2025, a strong southerly gale was blowing in Hecate Strait, with winds gusting up to 100 kph – typical winter weather for that body of water. Marine experts say the conditions would have been worse out in the open Pacific for the captain to take the longer route hugging the west coast.
About 25 tankers leave Trans Mountain’s marine terminal each month, and most head out to open waters through the Salish Sea around the southern tip of Vancouver Island, which is not covered by the moratorium.
Data provided by Transport Canada show the New Alliance made at least two passes through the moratorium waters in 2025, with a second trip in February. That same year, multiple crude oil tankers were tracked through Hecate Strait, including the Stoic Warrior, Tigerlily and Whistler Spirit.
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Flavio Nienow, spokesman for Transport Canada, did not comment on whether oil-laden ships within the moratorium zone followed the spirit of the legislation, saying only that “Canada maintains one of the strongest marine-safety regimes in the world.”
A spokesperson for Trans Mountain said the company could not say how often vessels loaded at its marine terminal take that route.
“Trans Mountain does not have authority over the route a vessel takes once it has safely loaded at the Westridge Marine Terminal‚” said media relations officer Vanessa De Matteis.
Heiltsuk Chief Marilyn Slett, president of the Coastal First Nations, said the presence of oil tankers in the moratorium waters is troubling. The Coastal First Nations is an umbrella organization that represents nine First Nations on the central coast, including the Heiltsuk and Haida Nations.
“Coastal First Nations were recently made aware of isolated reports of tankers travelling through the Hecate Strait,” she said in a statement to The Globe and Mail. “These reported trips are deeply concerning to us, and we are currently working with our partners in government to confirm if and why they may have occurred.”
Paul Blomerus, chief executive officer of Clear Seas, a Vancouver-based non-profit that promotes sustainable marine shipping, said that sometimes the safest route hugs the north coast.
“The tanker ban doesn’t restrict tankers from passing through those waters. And in fact, somewhat perversely, those international shippers crossing the Pacific perceive Hecate Strait and Dixon Entrance as sheltered waters and if there are storms in the Pacific, you’ll see ships like container ships, bulk carriers and even loaded oil tankers bound for Asia, taking that more northerly route.”
Mr. Blomerus said modern oil tankers have multiple safety features that have substantially reduced the risk of accidents, and questioned the need for a moratorium at all. “I am not aware of a comprehensive risk analysis that went behind that piece of legislation.”
Ottawa has more than one option for permitting tankers to load crude oil at north coast ports that are currently subject to the moratorium it imposed through legislation seven years ago, said Jeremy Barretto, a partner at Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP who co-chairs the law firm’s national major projects team.
One would be for the federal transport minister to grant a public interest exemption to the proponent of the pipeline, allowing vessels to moor and load at a port such as Prince Rupert. Another would be granting an exemption through the Building Canada Act, which the Carney government passed last year to accelerate major projects deemed to be in the national interest.
“The problem is social acceptance. The Coastal First Nations and a lot of other nations have expressed concern about diluted bitumen and oil being permitted to be shipped off of the area subject to the tanker ban,” Mr. Barretto said.
The Alberta government is trying to find a way to address the coastal First Nations’ decades-long concerns, though so far the chiefs have been unmoved in their opposition to shipping Alberta crude in north coast waters.