Fueling Alaska: millions of gallons delivered yearly via land, water, and air.

AuthorResz, Heather A.
PositionTRANSPORTATION

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Before planes, trains, and automobiles, traditional Alaska Native watercraft plied Alaska's rivers and coast lines for thousands of years. Later Russian boats, American poling boats, rowboats, sailboats, and steamboats using Alaska waterways were the primary route for transporting passengers and freight.

Although most of the steamboats in Alaska were used on the Yukon River and its tributaries, one of the earliest to use steam-powered ships on Alaska's rivers was Captain William Moore, who carried gold seekers to the headwaters of the Stikine River on the Flying Dutchman in 1862.

The first steamer to push a load up the Yukon River was a fifty-foot stern-wheeler with a fifteen-inch draft named The Yukon on July 4, 1869.

First wood, then coal, and finally oil heated boiler fires turned the paddle and pushed the steamer forward.

During its first thirty years of operation, the Alaska Railroad "river division" operated steamers on the Yukon and Tanana rivers until it sold the assets in 1955 to a group of investors.

Since the 1980s most freight and passengers have reached villages by air. But Alaska's waterways remain a crucial transportation link for the delivery of millions of gallons of fuel to hundreds of remote locations around the state each year.

Good News for Rural Communities

A series of linked electrical grids deliver power to homes, business, and public buildings throughout Alaska's Railbelt region. A pipeline system from Cook Inlet connects ENSTAR to gas producers, which silently delivers the natural gas that heats the homes and businesses of thousands of customers across Southcentral.

But in the rest of Alaska, fuel arrives on ships, barges, tugs, smaller vessels, and airplanes. Regional hub communities like Dillingham, Bethel, Nome, Kotzebue, and Barrow have storage for millions of gallons of fuel to help reduce costs.

Rural Alaska fuel prices averaged $4.71 a gallon for heating fuel and $5.23 for gasoline in January 2016, according to the state's biannual Fuel Price Report. That's down from the average per gallon cost reported in the same one hundred communities in January 2015: $5.74 for heating fuel and $6.04 for gas.

Prices are expected to drop further when lower-cost fuel is barged in again this season, according to Bob Cox, vice president of Crowley Fuels in Anchorage.

Low oil prices that have led a $4.1 billion state budget gap and substantial layoffs in the oil patch are good news for rural Alaska...

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