DGGS to catalogue Alaska resources

The dependence of much of rural Alaska on diesel fuel for heating and lighting coupled with the escalating price of oil-based fuels is causing a major economic crisis in many communities in the state. To help address this problem Alaska’s Division of Geological and Geophysical Services is embarking on an exercise to identify and catalogue Alaska’s energy resources.

Known as the Alaska Energy Inventory project, the DGGS initiative will assemble data about energy sources that might be available to individual communities. Those energy sources potentially cover the gamut of fossil hydrocarbons, wind power, hydropower, wind energy and biomass.

“Recent increases in the price of oil have severely impacted the cost of energy throughout Alaska; especially hard hit are rural communities and remote mines that are off the road system and isolated from integrated electrical power grids,” DGGS said in its 2008 annual report. “Even though the state has significant conventional gas resources in restricted areas, few communities are located near enough to these resources to directly use natural gas to meet their energy needs.”

At present diesel fuel has to be transported at considerable cost to more than 150 roadless Alaska communities by barge or airplane for storage in large fuel tanks for winter use, DGGS said. DGGS will inventory and compile energy resource data to identify locations or regions where economic energy resources or combinations of energy resources could be developed to meet local community needs for space heating and electrical power generation.

The division will make the data it assembles available to the public through the Alaska Department of Natural Resources Land Records Information Section’s Alaska Mapper Web site, using Google Earth and the Terrago Technologies GeoPDF format.

—Alan Bailey