As many of you may have heard, in addition to owning and publishing the Arctic Sounder, I am chairman of my village corporation of Nome, Sitnasuak Native Corporation. Sitnasuak's fuel business has been waiting for its final fuel barge to arrive in Nome for three months. Our corporation was notified just over a week ago that our fall fuel barge carrying 1.6 million gallons of home heating fuel, diesel and gasoline would not be arriving in Nome at all.
Not receiving our fuel meant that the community of Nome would run out of fuel sometime in the spring. The only proven method of delivering fuel in the winter in Western Alaska is to have fuel flown into Nome one airplane load at a time, possibly taking hundreds of flights 24 hours a day as aircraft capable of hauling the fuel become available. This method would cost millions of dollars more than the fuel barge.
I assembled our team and we began researching all available options. We began contacting air carriers capable of fuel transport. Knowing that this would cost millions, we wondered if it was possible to still make an ocean delivery of fuel. The answer quickly became, "Yes that it is possible, but there are very limited options and almost none in the U.S."
One by one, we looked at what was possible for winter frozen ocean fuel delivery. Cook Inlet icebreaking tugs, Canadian tugs and barges, Norwegian icebreaking ships, and Russian ships. Anything close was committed and unavailable. Others were too far and on the other side of the world. But the Russian ships were close, capable and possibly available.
The few civilian icebreakers located in the U.S. are in the Great Lakes. There are three U.S. Coast Guard icebreakers, which are home-ported in Seattle, and two of them are out of commission undergoing repairs. The third is the USCG Healy, currently sitting off the coast of Nome in the Bering Sea, conducting research, but its draft is too deep to get within one mile of Nome's shore. The USCG Healy is also not designed to carry fuel beyond what is carried for its use. And yet the place where icebreakers are needed to be permanently based, the Arctic in Alaska, has none. This really shows how behind the United States is when it comes to icebreakers.
"We're missing the boat while other nations are expanding their icebreaker fleet," Lieutenant Governor Mead Treadwell said to a House Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation.
Lieutenant Governor Treadwell also told the Associated Press that the Russians plan to build nine more icebreakers.
With increased shipping through the Arctic, new oil and gas development in Alaska waters, and emergencies like what is happening in Nome, there is more of a need now than ever before in our history for new icebreaking ships capable of reaching the shores of our communities. The availability of these ships will ensure the health and safety not only of our communities but also of our oceans, the animals and everything connected to them.
Jason Evans is chairman of Nome's village corporation, Sitnasuak Native Corporation, and is the owner and publisher of The Arctic Sounder, where the preceding commentary first appeared. It is republished here with permission.
The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch. Alaska Dispatch welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, e-mail commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com.