VALDEZ, Alaska - A new chapter in U.S. oil exploration could open within days as Shell sails into seas north of Alaska, hoping to tap into a potential 90 billion barrels of crude that have beckoned for decades. The company has been there before, drilling exploratory wells in the 1980s and 1990s that tantalized with promise of riches deep below the freezing Chukchi and Beaufort seas. But a decadelong slump in oil prices depressed the value of the bounty. Crude from the Exxon Valdez tanker blackened Alaska's coast, drawing worldwide scrutiny to the potential for oil-related environmental disaster - a prospect reinforced two decades later when a blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico claimed...
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