BUCKLEY SPACE FORCE BASE, Colo. -- The 460th Logistics Readiness Squadron (LRS) hosted Col. Heidi Dexter, Space Base Delta 2 commander along with Chief Mater Sgt. Sharma Haynes, Space Base Delta 2 senior enlisted airman, and Mr. Andy Halldin, Director of Mission Support to showcase the Petroleum, Oils, and Lubricants (POL) fuels storage yard on Buckley Space Force Base. The 460 LRS POL team provides aviation and ground fuel support to several agencies across Team Buckley. Their primary focus is providing the highest quality of on-spec jet fuel and aviation products to the 140th Colorado Air National Guard, Army National Guard, transient and TDY aviation units in direct support of their flying missions. In addition, the team is directly responsible for ground fuel support to the installation for all general and special purpose government vehicles and generator support tanks.
The POL fuels mission on Buckley SFB is contractor operated and Mr. Dylan Quinn, a Fuels Lab Technician with Olgoonik Federal LLC, led the tour of the POL yard. He explained to the visiting group the daily processes for receiving fuel from local commercial fuel trucks, the storage and sampling of fuel as well as the monthly inventory requirements.
During the tour, Mr. Kirk Marcum, 460 LRS Fuels Contracting Officer's Representative (COR), who provides quality contractor oversight, shared that each month the team must climb the stairs of each bulk fuel storage tank to conduct inventory verification. The POL yard on Buckley has 2 jet fuel storage tanks that can store approximately 200,000 gallons each. Although a little cold and icy, the team climbed to the top of one of the fuel tanks and were shown how to verify the fuel inventory with a manual inspection. The top of the fuel storage tanks provided a wonderful view of Buckley SFB, downtown Denver, and the Rocky Mountains.
After the team completed the fuel storage tank inventory, they toured the facilities and fuel testing laboratory. Inside the laboratory, Dylan explainedMaj all the required tests the team must complete on every sample taken from each delivery receipt of jet fuel. They are required to pull a couple gallons of jet fuel to sample to ensure that the product received is on-spec meeting very stringent requirements and that it is safe for aircraft use. A standard set of fuel tests takes less than one hour and once the product passes the series of inspections, the fuel is then cleared for receipt and aircraft use.
The team finished the tour by explaining the new electronic process for issuing fuel transactions, a system called Electronic Point of Sale (EPoS). According to Defense Logistics Agency Energy, “EPoS is used to capture real-time military fleet management fuel retail transactions at unattended military service stations, mobile ground fuel transactions, and aviation fuel transactions for mobile airfield/flight line operations.” This upgrade provides a more modern, secure, and auditable fuel transaction processing system. Colonel Dexter and her team thanked the POL team for the tour of the POL fuels yard and explaining their role in supporting units across Space Base Delta 2 and Team Buckley.