ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – A 14-year-old girl who was injected with heroin by a man at a party last week in Alaska died on Thursday, the victim of an overdose that damaged her brain and heart, Anchorage police said.

Jena Dolstad spent days on life support after she was found last Friday face down in her own vomit. She never regained consciousness, Anchorage Police Department spokeswoman Anita Shell said.

Sean Warner, 26, who according to local media reports served in the U.S. war in Afghanistan as a Navy medic, was accused of injecting the girl with heroin at his home and will likely be charged with murder or manslaughter, Shell said.

Police reports said Dolstad was found overdosed on Warner’s bed the night after she had been injected with 25 to 30 units of heroin, identified by a witness as “China White.”

The reports said she had wanted to try the drug but allowed Warner to inject her because she was unwilling to give herself a shot.

Police reports did not explain the relationship between the pair but said Warner told officers he did not know Dolstad’s name or age. Witnesses told police they went with Warner to pick up the girl on their way to his home the night of the gathering.

Warner’s relatives in Oregon told Anchorage television station KTUU that Warner began using heroin himself after suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome from the war in Afghanistan.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – A remote volcano in Alaska’s Aleutian islands erupted early on Thursday, spouting an ash cloud 15,000 feet into the sky and prompting an air-traffic alert, scientists said.

The Cleveland Volcano, located on an uninhabited island 940 miles southwest of Anchorage, had been oozing lava and gas since July.

Ash from the 5,676-foot volcano is considered potentially dangerous to aircraft because Cleveland’s peak lies directly below commercial flight routes between Asia and North America.

Additional explosions producing larger ash clouds are possible and could come without warning, the observatory said.

Thursday’s explosion, captured by satellite imagery, likely stemmed from a gradual buildup of pressure during months of intermittent low-level eruptions, said Dave Schneider, a geophysicist with the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

The last significant eruption at Cleveland was in 2001, when the volcano unleashed three explosions that spewed ash as high as 39,000 feet, spilled a stream of lava from the summit crater and unleashed an avalanche of molten rock, according to the observatory. Cleveland also erupted in 2009, with smaller ash emissions.

The volcano encompasses about half the uninhabited Chuginadak Island. The nearest human settlement is Nikolski, a tiny Aleut village located about 45 miles to the east.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Dec 16 (Reuters) – ConocoPhillips will restart exports from its liquefied natural gas plant in Kenai, Alaska, a 42-year-old facility that had been slated for shutdown, a company spokeswoman said late on Thursday.

ConocoPhillips has acquired new contracts for natural gas supplies from Cook Inlet producers, including Buccaneer Energy Ltd., said company spokeswoman Natalie Lowman.

“We’ve found enough gas supply to be able to resume exports,” Lowman said.

ConocoPhillips has also leased an LNG tanker to restart the plant’s decades-long export business with Asian markets, she added.

Exports are expected to resume in the second half of 2012, Lowman said. As of yet, there are no plans to seek an extension for the license that allows ConocoPhillips to export LNG until 2013, she added.

Lowman declined to identify the prospective Asian LNG customers, saying ConocoPhillips was still working on contracts.

ConocoPhillips acquired full ownership of the plant in September when it bought Marathon Energy’s 30 percent share in the facility.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – A federal judge on Wednesday rejected a plea deal for two men who prosecutors say made hundreds of harassing phone calls to Sarah Palin’s lawyer, calling a proposed sentence of probation too lenient.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Burgess said Shawn Christy, 20, and his father Craig Christy, 48, represented a risk to the public after engaging in a pattern of harassment against a variety of people.

“While one person may be the object of their ire at one point, it clearly shifts to others,” Burgess said, saying the men had harassed and threatened children, law-enforcement agents and judges. “They seem undeterred,”

He set a trial date in the case for January 3, although federal prosecutors said it was possible attorneys could negotiate a new plea agreement in the meantime.

The father and son from McAdoo, Pennsylvania, were initially prosecuted in state court in connection with a barrage of telephone calls and other messages sent to Palin and her family members.

A state magistrate judge issued a series of restraining orders last year and earlier this year preventing them from contacting Palin, a former Alaska governor and the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, and her family members.

Fairbanks-based attorney John Tiemessen represented Palin in that case and later became the subject of the Christys’ anger, according to federal prosecutors.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Dec 7 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell on Wednesday acquired exploration rights to state territory off Alaska’s northern coast, while ConocoPhillips increased holdings on both state and federal lands on the North Slope.

Shell, ConocoPhillips and Spanish oil company Repsol, which acquired significant North Slope acreage, were active bidders in a series of state and federal oil lease sales held in Anchorage.

Those and other companies and groups submitted over $20.9 million in high bids for state onshore and offshore territory and over $3 million in high bids for federal onshore territory in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

Shell won rights to 18 tracts in Harrison Bay, an area north of the federally managed NPR-A. Shell has been working on an ambitious program to drill offshore in federal waters off Alaska’s Arctic coastlines, but the move to state offshore territory is new for the company.

Curtis Smith, spokesman for Shell in Alaska, said the company continues to concentrate on its exploration plans in federal waters of the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas but is seeking to diversify its offshore operations.

“We like the geology that we see beneath those particular leases,” Smith said. “We’re hopeful that there are synergies between the leases we purchased today and the leases we hold on the federal offshore.”

Shell is waiting for government approval to drill up to three exploration wells a year in 2012 and 2013 in federal waters of the Chukchi Sea and up to two a year over the same period in the Beaufort.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – A top college runner from Kenya who lost his feet to frostbite after spending two days missing in an Alaska snowstorm was despondent over the death of a friend on the day he disappeared, according to a police report made public on Tuesday.

Marko Cheseto, a two-time NCAA All-American runner for the University of Alaska at Anchorage, had been struggling emotionally since a close friend and fellow Kenyan runner committed suicide in February, according to the report, which was compiled by the university’s police department.

Cheseto, 28, left the university during a heavy snowstorm on November 6. He walked into a campus hotel more than 48 hours later, severely hypothermic and suffering from frostbite.

“He told me that he felt like no one had been able to understand how difficult things had been for him, and that everyone basically just said to hang in there,” a police officer who interviewed Cheseto in the hospital after he was rescued wrote in the report.

Cheseto is among several Kenyan runners who have helped turn the University of Alaska into a cross-country and track powerhouse.

He holds the speed record for the Anchorage Mayor’s Half-Marathon, a popular event held in mid-summer. He also holds academic honors for maintaining a near-perfect grade-point average while studying nursing and nutrition.

PASSED OUT IN THE WOODS

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – A Russian tanker with icebreaking capability will make an emergency fuel delivery to Nome, Alaska, after a massive winter storm turned back a barge carrying the city’s last regularly scheduled fuel delivery.

The Sitnasuak Native Corporation said it had signed a contract to have a vessel owned by the Russian company RIMSCO deliver 1.5 million gallons of fuel to Nome by year’s end.

The operation, if successful, will allow Nome residents to avoid a serious fuel shortage later this winter resulting from the missed barge delivery, said Jason Evans, Sitnasuak’s chairman.

Nome, a city of about 3,600, lacks outside road access and depends on ships and aircraft for supplies. Fuel prices are already high — averaging about $5.40 for a gallon of gasoline — but a shortage later in the winter could have added several dollars to that per-gallon price.

Sitnasuak, which owns one of two local Nome fuel distribution companies, had missed the year’s final scheduled barge delivery of fuel.

A barge carrying 1.6 million gallons of gasoline, diesel fuel and heating fuel failed to reach the port of Nome because of bad weather and sea-ice chunks blown into the harbor by hurricane-force winds in a storm last month that was considered the strongest in western Alaska since 1974.

With the barge delivery canceled, Sitnasuak had been considering flying in fuel later in the year, an expensive option. Delivery by the Russian vessel is more expensive than the traditional barging method, but is substantially less than flying in fuel, Evans said.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – A Coast Guard icebreaker cruising off the coast of Alaska after a research season in the Arctic Ocean should be diverted to clear a path to Nome so fuel can be delivered to that isolated northern city, the state’s two U.S. senators said on Thursday.

The city, hammered by a hurricane-like storm earlier this month, missed this year’s last scheduled barge delivery of gasoline, diesel and heating fuel. Residents are worried about the prospect of paying $9 a gallon for gas.

Senators Lisa Murkowski and Mark Begich sent letters to Coast Guard Commandant Robert Papp on Thursday asking that icebreaker Healy, which on Thursday was in the Bering Strait region near Nome, delay its return to its home port in Seattle to assist the city of 3,600 residents.

The last barge to attempt to reach Nome was carrying 1.6 million gallons of fuel. It was unable to dock in the city in November because of bad weather, as winds from the storm pushed large chunks of ice into Nome’s port and effectively closed it to marine traffic, Murkowski said in her letter to Papp.

If the icebreaker clears a path, a barge would be able to make a delivery, she said.

“While I am sure the officers and crew of the CGC Healy are anxious to return home to Seattle, I ask that you use the CGC Healy and other assets available to assist the people of western Alaska with any fuel or supply shortages they face, if possible,” Murkowski said in her letter to Papp.

Without another barge delivery of fuel, residents of Nome could see gasoline prices rise by about $4 a gallon later this winter, Begich said in his letter to Papp.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – The Bering Sea city of Nome, still recovering from a massive storm three weeks ago, now finds itself coping with the cancellation of the last scheduled fuel delivery for the winter, officials said.

A barge carrying 1.6 million gallons of gasoline, diesel fuel and heating fuel had been due in Nome before the onset of winter but turned around before reaching the city, with the blame put on bad weather including a recent storm, officials said.

Now enough sea ice has formed to preclude barge deliveries for the rest of the winter, and local officials worry that inventories could dwindle to dangerous levels in a few months.

There was no immediate energy crisis, Nome Mayor Denise Michels said on Wednesday. But the worry was that later in the winter, around March, fuel would become scarce and costly in the city of 3,600, she said.

“It already is high,” Michels told Reuters, adding that gasoline sells for $5.39 to $5.43 a gallon around town. “We can’t take a hit. It’s hard enough as it is for folks here, trying to get their gasoline.”

The canceled shipment affected one of the city’s two local fuel suppliers, Bonanza Fuel, which is owned by the Sitnasuak Native Corp. Jason Evans, board chairman, said the company was looking for alternatives to ship fuel in to the remote community, which has no outside road access.

“We’re exploring all options, but the only proven method that’s left, I think, is to fly it in,” Evans said. “It’ll be significantly more expensive to fly than to barge it.”

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – Federal prosecutors on Tuesday said BP Plc broke pledges to improve operations after causing the worst pipeline spill on Alaska’s North Slope five years ago and should be subject to additional punishment for its negligence.

Prosecutors are seeking to revoke the criminal probation imposed on BP in a 2007 settlement agreement, claiming the oil company violated probationary terms by continuing its pattern of sloppy management, ultimately resulting in another pipeline spill in 2009.

The prosecutors spoke at a court hearing in Anchorage, which is expected to last at least the remainder of this week.

BP has been trying to rebuild its image after taking the bulk of the blame for the largest U.S. offshore oil spill last year in the Gulf of Mexico.

In 2007, BP pleaded guilty to a Clean Water Act charge stemming from its 2006 spill of 212,000 gallons of crude oil from a corroded pipeline at Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, the nation’s largest oil field.

The spill was the biggest on record at the North Slope oil fields. To settle the case, BP paid $20 million in fines and restitution and pledged to undertake a series of operational improvements over its three-year probation period.

But a late-November 2009 pipeline rupture at the BP-operated Lisburne field, next to Prudhoe Bay, showed that the criminal punishment imposed in 2007 was not harsh enough, prosecutors believe, according to a pre-hearing brief, filed earlier this month.