Interior Alaska is already in the grip of winter, with freezing temperatures and a blanket of snow and ice. But in a warm coffee shop in downtown Fairbanks, Kate Marshall was sipping a latte.
She doesn’t make it into town often. Marshall lives almost an hour north, in a cabin she built about 30 years ago. It’s not always convenient, she said, but she wouldn’t want to live any other way.
“I rarely hear a siren,” Marshall said. “It’s wonderful, it’s quiet. We have wildlife that creep around — my friends, the wolves, that I tell my trapper friends to come get. It's lovely.”
Marshall is 67-years-old and a retired civil servant. She said this year has been hard. Food and healthcare cost more, and so does the heating oil she burns in her Toyo stove to keep her house warm.
“It's going to cost me a couple of grand to fill up my tank,” Marshall said. “It's a lot of money, especially when you're on a fixed income.”
The Iran War has sent oil prices surging across the country. Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a key artery for global oil supplies, remains severely disrupted.
For Alaskans who rely on heating oil to keep their homes warm, there’s not much choice about whether to buy it. And in Fairbanks, switching to another heat source wouldn’t necessarily help: firewood and electricity are expensive, too.
Interior residents still reeling from last year’s record cold
Last year’s record cold winter — which brought weeks of temperatures in the minus 40s — put many Interior households over their heating budgets. Another cold winter, with significantly higher prices, is a daunting prospect.
“Because I'm on a budget, I have to keep my furnace at a certain temperature when it’s really cold,” Marshall said. “You just dress warmer.”
Most Fairbanks homes rely on heating oil, and residents are paying over $6 a gallon, up from about $3.75 last year. And in a place this cold, they burn a lot of it. According to state data from 2019, Fairbanksans use nearly three times more fuel than the average American — about 1,230 gallons per year.
For many, this year’s bigger heating bills are forcing difficult choices. Marshall said she’s holding her breath until prices come back down, and she’s looking for small ways to save money.
“My parents were children of the Depression,” Marshall said. “So I was taught to live basic. The fresh vegetables up here suck, you just do frozen. I buy them when they're on sale.”
Alaska’s diesel-dependent communities are more vulnerable to global price swings
Steve Colt, an economist at the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, said he doesn’t see an end in sight to the higher costs.
“The Fairbanks people — they're fully exposed to this price runup,” he said. “Whereas, in Anchorage, we've got natural gas, which everyone complains that it's very expensive — but it's actually not, compared to all the places that are reliant on diesel.”
He said the worst may be yet to come for many rural communities. According to the state’s most recent fuel surveys, average fuel costs have reached record highs in rural Alaska, 44% above the national average — and much higher in some places.
Colt said people who live off the road system often purchase and store their winter fuel months ahead of time, which means price increases can hit households differently, depending on when they fill up.
Small home improvements can help
But there are ways to save. Dominique Pride, the director of research at the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, said some small actions can make a difference this winter.
“Try to do as many cost-effective energy efficiency measures as you can,” Pride said. “Even things as simple as putting plastic over your windows can help. If you can afford it, have an energy audit done on your house.”
Some Fairbanks residents, like Melania Stoeber, are taking things into their own hands.
Standing in a foot of late October snow, Stoeber was peeling off the aluminum exterior of her historic downtown home to install modern foam insulation panels. She said she paid over a thousand dollars to fill her heating oil tank last month.
“Oil prices are definitely on my mind — how could they not be?” Stoeber said. “The memory of last winter and the skyrocketing costs, along with still not even being comfortable in the house.”
Stoeber said she’s still trying to track her daily oil usage, but she’s already feeling a difference in how her house retains heat.
“I'm fortunate that I can spend just under probably about $2,500 in a couple of weeks and do the physical labor to make my house warmer,” Stoeber said. “A lot of people can't do that. Folks that have been here for decades plus are bailing.”
Whether the war ends next week or drags on for months more, Stoeber and Marshall say they’re planning on sticking around — and stretching every drop of heating oil.