At America's northernmost airport, the fuel is Iñupiat-owned

At the northernmost airport in America, where no road reaches and every gallon of fuel arrives by air or barge, the company that keeps the planes flying traces its roots to the land settlement that reshaped Alaska. That's the quiet backstory behind an otherwise routine state notice.

The Alaska Department of Transportation is taking public comment on a five-year renewal of an aviation-fuel lease at the Utqiaġvik (Barrow) airport held by Eskimos, Inc., at $8,680 a year. The lease covers a roughly 40,000-square-foot parcel where the company sells and stores aviation fuel — mundane on paper, foundational in practice. Utqiaġvik has no road to the rest of Alaska, so aircraft are the primary link to the outside world, and stored fuel is what keeps that link open.

What gives the notice weight is who Eskimos, Inc. is. It's one of the first businesses created by Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, the Iñupiat-owned corporation formed after the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. By ASRC's own account, it built Eskimos, Inc. as a fuel-distribution company for the express purpose of bringing jobs and services to shareholders on the North Slope. Half a century later, that same company holding the fuel lease at the region's most vital airport is a small, concrete example of Native corporations doing exactly what ANCSA envisioned: owning the infrastructure their own communities depend on, in a place where supplying fuel is both expensive and life-sustaining.

As one state transportation planner put it in a related discussion, "Fuel is very expensive in rural areas, and getting the fuel out there safely and being able to store it and potentially reduce costs is so important to folks." The renewal is a recurring five-year process; DOT ran a similar notice for the same lease in 2021.