Mount Redoubt is Sucker-Punching Alaskan Employement

Mount Redoubt, Alaska, is one of the tallest mountains in America. But few people had even heard of the Goliath of the north until its imminent eruption made national news in early 2008. Now, here it is June, and Redoubt has erupted spewing ash lightly across the varied towns and cities of South Central Alaska. Its last eruption, on April 4, was minor and the nation, and many Alaskans have longed stopped wondering about Mount Redoubt and its eruption.

However, Alaska's unemployment office has not. Mount Redoubt's dome continues to grow slowly extending down the mountain's steep south slope. Experts at the Alaskan Volcano Observatory feel Mount Redoubt is not finished and the biggest eruption is yet to come. What does that mean to Alaskans? A little more than we may get a little more ash.

The volcanoes first eruption closed operations of ten oil platforms on the west side of the Cook Inlet, as well as the source of the shut down, the drift river processing plant. The closed oil plat forms simply have nowhere to send their oil with Drift River shut down. The Drift River Oil Terminal is located illogically so it seems at the base of Mount Redoubt, and has been closed like clockwork coinciding with Redoubt's eruptions about every twenty years.

The plant was most likely originally built on the location due to the rare beach form that drops directly into the inlet allowing tankers to pull directly up to the facility rather than risking pipes running out to the states coastal norm which becomes deep enough for large boats miles off shore. In 1966 when the plant was built, the demand for oil outweighed the future threats from Mount Redoubt's volcanic rage.

The oil industry is one of Alaska's top employment fields, and the shut down of so many facilities has hit Alaskan residents hard. Many oil field/platform workers find themselves laid-off, or on call with no work in the prime summer season. Local oil industry sites such as Peak, Veco, and Udelhoven in Nikiski, Alaska find themselves flooded with reassigned platform workers taking more work from locals in the area. Coupled with the economic state of the United States as a whole, the unemployment rate in South Central Alaska has seen an increase in a season that normally floods the state with work and income.

The result? Rather than dreading Mount Redoubt's big finale many Alaskan's are wishing she'd go on and get it over with so life can return to normal in the 49^th state's most populated region.

Sources:
http://www.avo.alaska.edu/activity/Redoubt.php
http://www.adn.com/money/industries/oil/story/773178.html