Tanker carrying fuel approaching final reach to Nome

NOME, Alaska – Crews worked to build a path Sunday over a half-mile of Bering Sea ice for the final leg of a Russian tanker’s mission to deliver fuel to a town isolated amid one of the most severe Alaska winters in decades.

The tanker was moored roughly a half-mile from Nome’s harbor after a Coast Guard cutter cleared a path for it through hundreds of miles of a slow journey stalled by thick ice and strong ocean currents.

The tanker got into position Saturday night, and ice disturbed by its journey had to freeze again so workers could create some sort of roadway to lay a hose that will transfer 1.3 million gallons of fuel from the tanker to the harbor in Nome.

On Sunday, workers spent the morning walking around the vessel and checking the ice to make sure it was safe to lay the hose, which will take about four hours, said Jason Evans, board chairman of the Sitnasuak Native Corp.

With the tanker and the Coast Guard ice breaker sitting just offshore and poised to deliver the fuel, Evans said, the bulk of the mission’s biggest challenges were behind the crew, but a lot of work remained.

Still, the final job of transferring fuel from the ship to the town comes with its own hurdles: In addition to waiting for the ice to freeze, crews must begin the transfer in daylight, a state mandate. And Nome has just five hours of daylight this time of year.

“In theory, it was possible and in reality, it now is done,” Evans said of the journey.

A storm prevented Nome’s 3,500 residents from getting a fuel delivery by barge in November. Without the tanker delivery, supplies of diesel fuel, gasoline and home heating fuel were expected to run out in March and April, well before a barge delivery again in late May or June.

The especially harsh winter has left snow piled up 10 feet or higher against the wood-sided buildings in Nome, a former gold rush town that is the final stop on the Iditarod dog sled race. On Sunday, everything was covered in a layer of wind-blown snow and vehicles looked frozen in place, as though they haven’t been moved in weeks.

The tanker began its journey from Russia in mid-December, picking up diesel fuel in South Korea before heading to Dutch Harbor, Alaska, where it took on unleaded gasoline. Late Thursday, the vessels stopped offshore and began planning the transfer to Nome, more than 500 miles from Anchorage on Alaska’s west coast.

In total, the tanker traveled an estimated 5,000 miles going from Russia to South Korea, then toward Japan and to Dutch Harbor and Nome, said Rear Adm. Thomas Ostebo, commander of District Seventeen with the Coast Guard.