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BC Ferries has announced that the fuel surcharge it currently has in place for a number of routes will be withdrawn before the end of the year.

Speaking at the inaugural sailing of the company's newest vessel Coastal Celebration, BC Ferries president David Hahn said "I'm pleased to announce that the fuel surcharges on the minor routes and Route 3, the Langdale run, will go off on Dec. 5, and on the major routes they'll go off on Dec. 19."

"We're conducting, right now, a pretty aggressive 'hedging' program where hopefully we'll be able to lock in no fuel surcharges at all next year," added Hahn at the ceremony to mark the Coastal Celebration's first voyage from Swartz Bay to Tsawwassen.

A fuel surcharge of 10.3 percent was implemented by BC Ferries on August 1st for major routes. This was then cut in half on November 4th in response to the drop in marine fuel prices.

When the announcement to reduce the surcharge by 50 percent was made in October, Hahn had said “We are not able to completely eliminate the fuel surcharge at this time, as we are still paying for the spike in fuel prices that occurred earlier this year, before we implemented the fuel surcharge on August 1, 2008.”

Speaking at the inauguration ceremony, Hahn is reported said that its latest vessel acquisitions will enable the company to significantly reduce its fuel costs.

In addition to the Coastal Celebration, BC Ferries has added two German-built Super C-class vessels. A fourth vessel, Northern Expedition is also being built to serve on northern routes and is expected to be completed by January 30th.

Commenting on the potential fuel savings of using C-class vessels, Hahn said "A classic example would be [Coastal Celebration] versus a Spirit-class ship. A Spirit takes seven or eight minutes to turn around on each side, this ship doesn't have to do it [as it is able to load on both ends]. There's very substantial fuel savings there."