Bob Himschoot heats his Dillingham home with firewood he cuts himself, and after oil prices skyrocketed in the summer of 2008, the city councilman saw more of his neighbors doing the same. But after oil prices dropped back down that winter and the rest of the country put the price-spike behind them, Dillingham residents even today are still paying prices kept high by fuel remaining from the summer of 2008.

Dillingham's fuel-price hangover, now going strong for more than six months, is a result of how diesel and gasoline are delivered in rural Alaska. Because many remote towns depend on barges to ship fuel in during ice-free months, fuel prices are set when the last vessel leaves town. The fuel delivered in summer 2008 was so expensive that many Dillingham residents cut their consumption. And when more fuel was delivered last summer, there was an unusually large supply of the 2008-priced fuel still sitting in the tanks.

For Dillingham's some 2,400 residents, that means higher gasoline, heating and electrical bills. The higher fuel price has also hit at least one airline that serves the town, driving up airfare by 17 percent.

"I saw a lot more people out at the wood line starting in the winter of 2008," Himschoot said.

As in much of rural Alaska, Dillingham's fuel prices are set by averaging the price of the leftover fuel with the price of the new fuel while taking into account how much old fuel was left. The fuel was so expensive in Dillingham in 2008 that fewer people bought it. That meant that the tanks still had a lot of expensive fuel in them when the barges came in 2009, which kept the prices higher than if the tanks had been empty.

Bristol Express is one of Dillingham's four gas stations, and when the last fuel barges left after the summer of 2007 the station was charging $4.82 for a gallon of diesel, according to Chris Napoli, the station's operator. By the next summer the price of a barrel of oil had doubled, and the price of diesel responded by jumping to $7.17 when the last barge left in 2008.

Expensive oil means expensive diesel; that's nothing new. The twist is that by the time the 2009 barges arrived, a barrel of oil was even cheaper than it was in 2007, but thanks to the expensive leftover 2008 fuel, the price of diesel in Dillingham was stuck, and only went down to $6.12 by the time the last barge left. That's $1.30 higher than it was in 2007, even though the price of oil was lower.

The effects of that range from Dillingham residents cutting and burning more firewood to fewer afternoon snowmachine adventures to higher ticket prices for air travelers between Dillingham and Anchorage, said city officials, residents and others.

High fuel prices have resulted in a 17-percent increase in airfares for PenAir, a regional carrier that serves Dillingham, said Danny Seybert, president and chief operating officer of PenAir. Before the price-spike, PenAir would book 32 people on a flight to Dillingham to ensure it left with a full load of 30 passengers. Since fuel prices shot up in Dillingham, the airline aims for 27 passengers, Seybert said, so that its planes can carry more fuel and avoid filling their tanks in the town.

Seybert, who closely follows the price of fuel around rural Alaska, said that even though the price of oil today is about the same as it was two years ago, the fuel prices in rural communities are still at least a dollar more due to 2008's remainder. He estimates that it will take two more years for fuel prices in bush towns to wash the expensive fuel out of their systems.

"Price changes happen year-round at the pump in most places," Himschoot said, "but in rural Alaska they only happen once."

Contact Josh Saul at jsaul_alaskadispatch.com