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Barrow is blessed: it has gas. In fact, it has possibly the cheapest gas in all of Alaska thanks to three big fields right outside of town - the East and South Barrow Gas Fields, originally developed by the United States Navy in the 1940s but now owned by the North Slope Borough, and the Walakpa Gas Fields, a North Slope Borough project.
Cheaper than what is charged for potable water, natural gas heats homes and runs the turbines that generate the electricity that the member-owned cooperative Barrow Utilities & Electric Coop Inc. then offers at a very reasonable residential rate to the residents of Barrow. A rate many villages in Alaska would envy.
BUECI gets the natural gas from the North Slope Borough at $1 per 1,000 cubic feet (MCF), says Ben Franz, BUECI manager. "We use the natural gas for our energy source to run our turbines," says Franz. "We do offer a residential rate now of $0.1106 (a bit over 11 cents KWH) to our membership."
We sell natural gas to our members after the base rate of $20.76 for the first 0-55 CCF (hundred cubic feet) and $0.3049 a CCF after the first 55 CCF (a bit over 30 cents a hundred cubic foot)."
The BUECI staff is...