Residents in rural Alaska are paying big at the pump

Haliehana Stepetin lives in Akutan, a village in the Aleutian Islands with 100 year-round residents. Stepetin told the Alaska Independent that rising gasoline prices have impacted most facets of her life, from rising surcharges on shipping prices to ever-increasing travel expenses.

Fuel costs are rising throughout rural Alaska. As of July 7, Alaska fuel prices were nearly a dollar more per gallon on average than in the rest of the United States, according to data from AAA. The national average gas price on July 8, according to AAA data, was $3.796 per gallon, while Alaska’s was $4.729. The national average a year prior was $3.149, and Alaska’s was $3.744. The Northern Journal reported prices of more than $9 per gallon last month in some parts of the state, up from less than $7 per gallon.

Stepetin said she and her brother are starting a fishing charter company out of Akutan, planning to pick people up in Dutch Harbor and take them out for halibut, cod, and black bass. Dutch Harbor is a hub town 40 nautical miles west of Akutan, and is only accessible by boat or plane. The boat Stepetin and her brother secured is the biggest personally owned gas-powered boat on Akutan Island, with two Yamaha 225 motors burning 30 gallons an hour at top speed from a 150-gallon tank.

“When we bought the boat, it was around $600 to fill up the entire tank, but now it’s got to be around $700 or $800,” Stepetin told the Alaska Independent.

Akutan has no cars or paved roads, but boats aplenty. There are no gas stations on the island. Stepetin said she can buy gas from the city of Akutan, which orders about 16 50-gallon barrels of fuel each summer to sell to residents, but each person is only allotted three barrels’ worth. 

“It’s almost $5 a gallon, and that’s stayed pretty steady — we’re kind of lucky it hasn’t gotten more,” Stepetin said. “It’s always been around $4 a gallon.”

They also have the option to buy gas from Trident Seafood, which runs the largest seafood processing facility in North America on the north side of Akutan Island, but it costs $11 a gallon.

To avoid high gas prices at Trident and the cap on purchasing the city of Akutan sets, Stepetin said, she and her brother have to travel the 40 nautical miles from Akutan to Dutch Harbor to fuel up. Filling up is a logistical nightmare, Stepetin said. Delta Western Fuel, a fuel distribution company in western and southeast Alaska, has a fuel truck that can deliver to boats, but the nozzle doesn’t reach down far enough to fill their tank.

“We park in, like, a boat harbor. We have to rent a car, or have somebody with the car help us, and go back and forth to the gas station and gas up with our 5-gallon jerry jugs until we have filled up the tank and filled up all of our 5-gallon jerry jugs,” Stepetin said.

Gas prices also have affected shipping costs. Stepetin said one of the only reliable ways for people to get items shipped to Akutan is with Ace Air Cargo. On April 1, the company’s fuel surcharge rate increased from 21% to 82%. The following month, Ace Air Cargo raised the rate again, to 85%. 

“It’s like double if you want to get anything out there, which makes it really hard, especially this time of year, summertime,” Stepetin said. “This is when all of the projects are happening, all of the subsistence is happening, and also our airfare went up even more.”

Stepetin recently traveled with her partner from Akutan to Anchorage, the state’s biggest city, to give birth. They had to take three flights to get from Akutan to Anchorage: first $125 for each ticket for a five-minute helicopter flight from Akutan to Akun Island, then a 20-minute flight on a six-seater plane to Dutch Harbor for $160, and finally $1,000 for a one-way trip from Dutch Harbor to Anchorage. She said those ticket prices increased recently due to gas prices.

“Nearly $3,000 for a round trip — that is absolutely absurd,” she said.

Over 1,000 miles away, in Ketchikan, an island in southeast Alaska with 30 miles of paved road, Maggie Moss noticed gas prices increasing in early March. On March 24, she paid $4.19 a gallon for gas. The next day, it bumped up to $4.44, and then not long after, $4.99.

Moss offers house cleaning services in the town of nearly 8,000 residents and commutes around town to her clients’ homes. She told the Alaska Independent that due to rising prices, she’s changed her work schedule to spend less time on the road. 

“I changed my work schedule so that I don’t have to drive across the island every week, I go every other week,” Moss said. “I put those two houses together.”

She said she used to go nearly two weeks between fill-ups at the gas station, but now she’s barely making it a week. She’s unsure if it’s because she’s spending more time sitting in construction traffic, or due to the fuel’s quality, or both. AAA said the average price per gallon of gas for Prince of Wales Island and Ketchikan together was $5.24.

“It’s not usually sitting at $5 a gallon for months at a time, but here we are,” Moss said.