Manokotak running on empty

MARY LOCHNER

June 19, 2008 at 12:41PM AKST

The tank is empty and the nearest gas station is hundreds of miles away. It’s not a situation anyone wants to face.

But the entire village of Manokotak has been mired in a circumstance that dire since it ran out of gasoline Monday, June 2, four days before its fuel barge was scheduled to come in.

Friday, June 6 came and went, but relief did not arrive.

The village had already been running on an emergency supply ordered in by plane after it ran out of the last fuel barge’s winter supply of gas in mid-May. The 1,600-gallon supply came at a hefty price, however: Flying it in drove the cost to the consumer up to $8.30 per gallon.

After that supply ran out June 2, fishermen desperate to get their boats into the Ugashik asked for more, and the village corporation, with a wary eye on the rising price of fuel, ordered a 400-gallon batch for fishermen only that came in Friday, June 13.

The cost?

$9.85 per gallon.

“Despite the amount, people are buying it,” said Manokotak Natives Limited administrator Nancy George. The village corporation, which is also the parent company for Manokotak Power and Manokotak Oil and Gas, purchases the village’s fuel.

When the spring fuel barge comes in, gas will be sold at $6.70 a gallon and stove oil for $7.50 a gallon. Its delay has George worried. She said the village is rationing stove oil, which provides heating and electricity, and that the village can probably stretch it until the barge arrives.

But ordering another batch of gas by air is something she said she hopes the village corporation won’t have to do.

“The rates are getting higher every time we order,” George said. “We’ll be risking it after this gas runs out. Even if we’re out, people will have to wait for the barge to come in or get their gas from Dillingham.”

Manokotak City Manager Edward Nick said some people are walking or catching rides with those who’ve been able to fetch gas from Dillingham.

“Individuals are taking their skiffs and making runs down to the dock there,” he said.

Delta Western President Kirk Payne said the fuel barge, the “OB6,” was late in coming out of dry dock in Dutch Harbor. The smaller vessel can maneuver in the river system to reach Manokotak, where larger barges that have delivered fuel to many communities in Bristol Bay can’t reach.

He said that, while some communities will have late-arriving spring fuel because of the barge’s delay, Manokotak is the only village on the barge’s schedule so far to run out of fuel before it arrives.

“The barge is currently steaming towards Bristol Bay to make deliveries it had hoped to make earlier in the month,” Payne said in a phone interview Wednesday, June 11.

He said it should be in Manokotak by Monday, June 23.

As for the cause of the delay, Payne said it came down to issues with the Dutch Harbor shipyard.

“The shipyard isn’t very proficient,” he said. “We’ll just leave it at that. On the record, they just had delays.”

Meanwhile some in Manokotak are walking to work, many traversing the seven miles from HUD housing into the main village. In the village of 400, George said that Good Samaritan acts — picking up folks walking on the road if one has a car with gas in it — have become a necessity.

But if the stove oil, which Manokotak uses for heat and electricity, runs out before the fuel barge arrives, the whole village will be in need of a few Good Samaritans.

“At least we still got electricity, but once that oil is gone, I wouldn’t have been talking to you on the phone,” George said. “Nushugak Cooperative, when lights are out they’ll be on so many hours for emergency, then once the battery’s gone every phone line in the village will be out.”

Those who have portable generators would switch to them, George said, but if the village runs out of stove oil before the fuel barge comes, many will be without electricity, and food stored in freezers will begin to spoil.

When the fuel barge does arrive, there are still hard times ahead, George said.

Because of the higher stove oil prices, electricity will go up from 34 cents per kilowatt to 45 cents per kilowatt on Tuesday, July 1.

“I don’t know how half of Manokotak will survive,” George said.

Mary Lochner can be reached at (907) 348-2438 or (800) 770-9830, ext. 438.