The Alaska Standard, By Alex Gimarc.  Shortly after taking office, the Obama administration...put a six-month halt on oil and natural gas exploration off the Alaska coast. The most prominent location was the Chukchi Sea, which held a federal lease sale in early 2008, bringing lease revenues worth $2.1 billion to the US Treasury. The Chukchi Sea alone is thought to hold reserves of over 15 billion barrels of oil and over 77 trillion cubic feet of natural gas – or the equivalent of what was thought to reside in Prudhoe Bay. [...]