Transportation intensive.

• Author: Stricker, Julie

In 1995, a string of late-summer storms in the Chukchi Sea prevented a barge carrying three million gallons of diesel fuel from reaching the Red Dog zinc and lead mine in Northwest Alaska - about a quarter of its annual fuel requirement.

Red Dog didn't worry about running out of gas. Operators quickly made plans to have the fuel flown in by Fairbanks air cargo companies, the rest was business as usual. Red Dog operations manager Tim Smith explains: "What we have up here is inherently bad weather, and I guess the biggest logistic here is probably transportation."

Cominco Alaska, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Cominco Ltd., of Canada operates Red Dog. The mine is located about 100 miles north of Kotzebue and 52 miles inland from the Chukchi Sea. Red Dog produces more than a million tons of zinc and lead a year, and is the largest producer of zinc concentrates in the world. But about eight months each year ice prohibits all maritime transportation.

The mine relies on barges and freighters to ship the ore to market. It depends on this same mode of transportation for the bulk of its supplies too. But the transportation window is narrow - only about 100 days a year. And to make matters more difficult, the harbor is too shallow to allow ore freighters to dock.

The big vessels stay from three to five miles offshore and ore is lightered out by barges, according to Smith. The shallow-draft barges measure about 300 by 75 feet and weigh 6,000 tons when fully laden. It takes 4,000-horsepower tugs to tow them to the freighters.

Three times a week, Northern Air Cargo flies in a 727 or DC-6 to transfer personnel and fresh food. A contractor trucks the ore along a 52-mile road from the mine to the coast for storage until it can be loaded onto a freighter.

The system of boats, barges, planes and trucks works well to keep operations running smoothly. The logistics of mining in remote areas can seem Byzantine, but modern technology smoothes out the edges - at a cost.

"Mining is defined as being able to extract minerals and make money," Smith says.

Getting the ore to market, not to mention coordinating personnel supply schedules for a remote area, remains a large, and expensive part of mining in Alaska. Red Dog ships its concentrates to smelters in Canada, Europe and Asia. Smith figures that costs about 21 cents a pound, a hefty chunk of the 65 cents a pound zinc brings on the market.

"We wouldn't be able to do this, to mine up here, if it wasn't such a...