Unalaska, AK – Aleutian regional organizations, legislative staffers and fuel providers will be meeting in Anchorage tomorrow to discuss how to put an end to the kind of fuel crises that have wracked villages in the region in the past two years.

District 37 Rep. Bryce Edgmon said he'd like to hear ideas on how to avoid a repeat of the situation this past winter in Nikolski, which ordered a fuel barge delivery for the early winter and received it just last week.

"We're going to have a casual sit-down to discuss what we can do to avert having that happen in the future," he said.

Although Edgmon himself will be in Juneau for the special session of the Legislature tomorrow, his staffers will be in Anchorage for the meeting. Joining them will be officials from the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association, the Aleutian Pribilof Island Community Development Association, and the state Division of Community and Regional Affairs. Also on hand will be representatives of Delta Western Fuels. The company's barges make most of the fuel deliveries to villages in the area, and the company came under fire this past winter for not getting to some of the smaller island communities in time for the winter fuel crunch.

"The problem was that the deliveries weren't made," said APIA senior scientist Bruce Wright, who works on energy issues for the organization. "And it looked like our communities weren't the top priority for the companies that were supposed to make deliveries."

Delta Western representatives weren't available for comment today. In the past, the company has acknowledged that there have been delivery problems but said that it's in a tight spot--there are a lot of customers to reach before the winter, and the weather doesn't always cooperate.

But advocates for the small Aleutian village communities often say that they're being skipped over in favor of floating processors and nearby communities with big processing plants, because those places buy far more fuel.

"It seems to be a little more lucrative to deliver to a large community, or a large working vessel out on the ocean, than to some of these small communities," Wright said.

But APICDA CEO Larry Cotter said that he might have a solution to that problem. His organization is looking at partnering with the five other community development quota (CDQ) groups in western Alaska to develop a bulk fuel program. He said that under that system, multiple communities could buy fuel together at a lower price and with better delivery guarantees.

"The idea is simply to pool everybody together and increase our bargaining power and our leverage," he said.

Another option that APICDA and APIA are considering is buying fuel from Sakhalin Island in Russia and storing it at the Aleut Corporation's 20 million-gallon tank farm on Adak, from which it could be barged out to the other communities in the region.

Cotter said that whatever they decide to do, the goal is to keep what happened in Nikolski this winter from happening again. He estimated that together APICDA, APIA and the village government shelled out nearly $100,000 on emergency fuel deliveries to the Umnak Island community throughout the winter and spring.

"[Nikolski] used virtually all the money they had," he said. "It was a very tragic situation."