Although the Flint Hills Refinery shutdown raised asphalt costs, the Alaska Department of Transportation said they haven’t seen a significant increase in trucking from Nikiski.
Shannon McCarthy with the DOT said it actually may have gone down.
McCarthy: “Because the main consumers of asphalt are actually in the Fairbanks area and the Anchoraage area so what they’ve been able to do apparently is oil is coming in through the ports and then either trucked north or in some cases like for projects on the Kenai trucked south.”
Tesoro’s Nikiski refinery is now the statewide oil asphalt provider.
DOT Northern Region Construction Engineer Frank Ganley estimated the Northern Region would use around 25,000 tons of asphalt oil this year.
With the 20% asphalt oil cost spike over the last year, that estimate means the state and contractors combined my possibly pay $3.75 more than projected this year.