Jet fuel for Alaska.

• Author: Stricker, Julie
• Position: MAPCO Alaska Petroleum Inc.

There was a time when Alaska's airplanes were tanked with import fuels. No more.

When the MAPCO Alaska refinery in North Pole completed an expansion late in 1998, it was a milestone of sorts for the state economy.

With the expansion, Alaska's three refineries are able to produce enough jet fuel for the state's needs. In a region heavily dependent on imports and with a dearth of manufacturing, that's no small accomplishment.

"Value-added industries provide more jobs in-state per unit of resource," says Karl Ohls, development program manager with the state Division of Trade and Development. "If you export raw materials, you have direct harvest jobs and transport jobs, but if you have a value-added product, you have manufacturing jobs in the state as well.

"If you have a resource and turn it into something else closer to a final product, then you have more support of the economy across the board."

With the closure of the pulp mills in Southeast Alaska, the state's only major value-added industries are seafood and petroleum refining, Ohls says. Other industries, such as many sawmills and Made in Alaska tourist products (with a few exceptions such as Alaska Wild Berry Products), are largely cottage industries because Alaska's remoteness from world markets has made manufacturing uneconomical.

IMPORT NO MORE

However, Alaska itself is a major market for jet fuel. Until MAPCO Alaska's expansion, Alaska had to import 14,000 barrels of jet fuel daily to meet demand. Williams Alaska Petroleum (which bought MAPCO Inc. in March 1998), the PetroStar refinery in North Pole and Tesoro's Nikiski refinery, all tap Alaska's crude oil resources, although Tesoro also imports some crude oil from overseas. Together, they help keep one of the world's busiest cargo airports supplied.

During the fiscal year that ended in June 1998, an average of 258 flights per day landed or departed from Anchorage International Airport, (AIA) says Susan Hinshaw, an administrative clerk for the airport. Of those, 156 are domestic passenger flights and nine are international passenger flights.

The remaining 93 are cargo flights, both domestic and international, which makes AIA one of the busiest cargo destinations in the country and first in the category of cargo aircraft landed weights. That means pumping a lot of fuel.

"On a very busy day, we can use as much as 2.2 million gallons," says Tom Mushovic, general manager for Signature Flight Support, which serves the Anchorage Fueling...