It wasn't the trial of the century but it was a big one for Alaska, though a handful of high school students snoozing through the proceedings didn't seem to care.

Fortunately, hundreds of other teens were fully engaged when the Alaska Supreme Court on Wednesday heard often-dense arguments at Anchorage's West High School under a "Supreme Court Live" program that helps educate the public while proving the robed dignitaries are real people.

Before hundreds of students in the school's auditorium, Chief Justice Walter Carpeneti and colleagues Dana Fabe, Daniel Winfree and Craig Stowers listened as attorneys from the state and Exxon Mobil Corp. squabbled over the lack of development at Point Thomson, one of Alaska's most promising oil and gas fields.

At the end of the arguments, kids in Day-Glo shoelaces, untucked shirts and awkwardly large ties lined up before microphones to question the justices and the well-dressed lawyers -- who sat at foldout tables in hard chairs during the argument.

The kids applauded when they heard something they liked -- such as a claim from Justice Craig Stowers (the ponytailed one) that he doesn't eat candy bars, only the healthy food his wife makes.

And the room broke out in laughter during the funniest questions, including from West High senior Jordan Asi. He asked: What music do the judges listen to before a hearing, to get pumped up?

Winfree (the fun one) said he might listen to the Beatles or smooth jazz.  

The justices had it easy during the student inquisition. They couldn't answer inquiries related to the case and left the room as the lawyers addressed the hardball questions.

An underground warehouse

Many students clearly grasped the big issue behind the minutiae. The state, after all, owns the massive amounts of gas and oil beneath Point Thomson, a 120,000-acre field about 50 miles east of Prudhoe Bay. So why are the unit's leaseholders -- operator Exxon Mobil with partners BP, Chevron and ConocoPhillips -- in control? Why have they, against the state's wishes, pushed off development for nearly four decades?

Why can't the state reclaim the leases and give them to companies that will produce?   

Though the students were sometimes hard to hear amid the noise, one boy in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans noted that by sitting on the oil and gas, the companies were essentially storing resources underground.

Bingo, said Richard Todd, the state's attorney. It's called warehousing, and it's what the argument is about. The oil companies say one reason they can't develop is that there's no multi-billion-dollar pipeline to ship the gas to market. But they can ship oil out by building a pipeline to the Badami field 20 miles away, which links to the main trans-Alaska pipeline.

A girl asked why the companies hold onto the leases if they aren't going to develop the field.  

The warehoused resources are an asset the oil companies can list on their financial sheets, said Todd.  

Charles Lifland, representing Exxon, said the resources are valuable to the state and the companies, but there are complex questions about when they become economically feasible to develop.

That's been the crux of an argument dating back decades. Oil was discovered at Point Thomson in 1975. Additional exploration drilling showed a massive resource containing 8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas -- about one-fourth the amount on the entire North Slope -- plus hundreds of millions of barrels of oil and gas liquids. Alaska's North Slope has the largest proven conventional reserves of natural gas in North America.

Broken promises or resource politics?

Exxon Mobil has long argued that the field presents technically challenging obstacles that hurt the project's economics, including that the gas is under extremely high pressure, making it difficult and dangerous to extract. Also, the heavy oil lies in hard-to-reach bands.