A remote Alaska island is paying $7.55 a gallon to heat its homes

The fuel that heats homes on St. Paul Island just arrived at $7.55 a gallon, and residents of the remote Pribilof Islands community will pay more once the city adds its own surcharge on top. The city has not said how much more. Its announcement did not include the surcharge amount or the final retail price at the pump.

The surcharge is the part of the price the city sets. It funds the city-run fuel utility, and the city says it is working to keep the charge as low as it can while still covering the cost of running fuel service for the island. It has not put a number to it, so residents know the total will be high but not how much of it is the city's own charge.

The city attributes the delivered cost to conflict in the Middle East disrupting the fuel's supply. At a legislative hearing this spring, Rep. Donna Mears passed along what she said a representative of the island's supplier, Vitus Marine, had told her: the fuel the company had been getting is no longer available, "because their fuel comes through the Strait of Hormuz from the Middle East." That account is secondhand, from the supplier by way of the legislator.

The city says it has few alternatives. It says it has approached other suppliers, and that they either lack barges that can reach the island or quote an even higher price. The other suppliers have not weighed in, and neither Vitus nor anyone else has responded to account for the price.

St. Paul is paying more than most of the state. A state survey early this year put heating fuel at about $6.49 a gallon across more than 90 unsubsidized Alaska communities, more than a dollar below St. Paul's delivered cost, before the city's surcharge.