By now, the two giant evaporators fabricated at Port Coquitlam's Ellett Industries should be slowly making their way by water to Portland.
Early Sunday morning, the stainless steel cylinders that look like rockets - each measuring 126 ft. long, 20 ft. in diameter and weighing 309,000 lb. - were trucked from the Kingsway Avenue plant, down Coast Meridian Road and placed on barges bound for Oregon.
Although headed for the Athabasca oil sands in Fort McMurray, the devices were "too big, too heavy and too wide" to be transported along B.C. roads, said Bob Gill, Ellett's vice-president of sales.
As a result, the evaporators are making a 20-day journey down the coast and up the Columbia River to Snake River, where they will be unloaded in Idaho to be carried to northeastern Alberta.
There, they will be used by GE Water Technologies to recycle the steam used to soften the oil in the ground. The clean water can then be reused or stored for ongoing industrial or drilling operations.
The move of the heavy cargo - a project that took 20,000 man-hours over 16 months to make - may be one of the biggest in western Canada into international waters; however, it's nothing new for the family-owned company. About 20 years ago, Ellett was the first Canadian firm to ship pressure vessels into China.
Besides evaporators and pressure vessels, Ellett also produces heat exchanger and pipe spooling, using metals such as stainless steel, high nickel alloys, titanium and zirconium.
