Here...read about gas costs in parts of Alaska
http://www.adn.com/article/20150101/bush-alaska-locked-high-gas-prices-fuel-delivered-last-summer-and-fall Gary Haupt
Forum Discussion
A real lack of competition is also a problem with fuel costs in the bush, that an the EPA type rules on storage of same. For a dozen years that we lived in the remote villages of Alaska, most of our fuel came in 55 gal sealed drums. I would buy about 1,500 gal of aviation gasoline and the same of regular gasoline for sno goes and spring boating. It was easy to tie up $20,000 in buying the fuel for the winter time use. All the fuel had to come in by river or coastal barges to be close to affordable to some. Jobs are very difficult to come by in the bush so most people are forced to buy it at the local store by the 5 gal can, packed two cans to a case.
All this fuel I bought in the fall, was a cash transaction, no credit cards back then. Even when I was flying my plane around the state, to stop and refuel was a cash matter. If I took a long trip, say from the Galena area 300 miles west of Fairbanks, where I lived for a number of years, to fly to the coast to Nome or Kotzebue and maybe on north to Shiefmaref or Point Hope, I had to carry as much as $3,000 in cash with me to buy aviation gas. Not only was it a lot of money, cash its self was not easy to come by. It just got recirculated in the villages till it looked and felt like a lump of green. LOL The store keeper in the village of Koyukuk, where I lived for awhile, would give me a check on her store account to cash if I was going into Fairbanks or Anchorage. Other than using registered mail, it was the only way. So it wasn't unusually, if I had been to Fairbanks, to have $10,000 to $20,000 in cash in my airplane on the return trip to the village.
The cost of freight will often double the cost of items in the bush, be it fuel, milk, bread, canned goods, etc. So while the overal population of the State of Alaska isn't changing much, the urban areas are getting larger at the expense of bush Alaska. The villages are drying up, slowly as the younger generation move to town to find work and better living conditions.
At the time the Alaska oil boom was taking place, the 70s, there was talk in Juneau of building a railroad extension from the Fairbanks area to the Nome area, with a service road along side. There was great opposition from many of the Alaska Native residents of the area where the route would have passed through. However, having a railroad for cheaper transportation, would have helped stabalized costs in this part of rural Alaska. Plus can you imagine how much fun it would be to be able to drive your RV all the way to the beaches of Nome. I suspect some of the resident now might have a different opinion of how much harm the railroad would have caused and the benefits of the same.
After the pipeline was finished, there were bumper stickers, in Alaska, that said, "God, give us one more economic boom and we promise this time, not to spend it like a bunch of drunken sailors."
All this fuel I bought in the fall, was a cash transaction, no credit cards back then. Even when I was flying my plane around the state, to stop and refuel was a cash matter. If I took a long trip, say from the Galena area 300 miles west of Fairbanks, where I lived for a number of years, to fly to the coast to Nome or Kotzebue and maybe on north to Shiefmaref or Point Hope, I had to carry as much as $3,000 in cash with me to buy aviation gas. Not only was it a lot of money, cash its self was not easy to come by. It just got recirculated in the villages till it looked and felt like a lump of green. LOL The store keeper in the village of Koyukuk, where I lived for awhile, would give me a check on her store account to cash if I was going into Fairbanks or Anchorage. Other than using registered mail, it was the only way. So it wasn't unusually, if I had been to Fairbanks, to have $10,000 to $20,000 in cash in my airplane on the return trip to the village.
The cost of freight will often double the cost of items in the bush, be it fuel, milk, bread, canned goods, etc. So while the overal population of the State of Alaska isn't changing much, the urban areas are getting larger at the expense of bush Alaska. The villages are drying up, slowly as the younger generation move to town to find work and better living conditions.
At the time the Alaska oil boom was taking place, the 70s, there was talk in Juneau of building a railroad extension from the Fairbanks area to the Nome area, with a service road along side. There was great opposition from many of the Alaska Native residents of the area where the route would have passed through. However, having a railroad for cheaper transportation, would have helped stabalized costs in this part of rural Alaska. Plus can you imagine how much fun it would be to be able to drive your RV all the way to the beaches of Nome. I suspect some of the resident now might have a different opinion of how much harm the railroad would have caused and the benefits of the same.
After the pipeline was finished, there were bumper stickers, in Alaska, that said, "God, give us one more economic boom and we promise this time, not to spend it like a bunch of drunken sailors."
