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  3. Judging by the $23 billion it earned last year, these should be the best of times for Shell, the Anglo-Dutch energy giant that r

Judging by the $23 billion it earned last year, these should be the best of times for Shell, the Anglo-Dutch energy giant that r

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问题     Judging by the $23 billion it earned last year, these should be the best of times for Shell, the Anglo-Dutch energy giant that ranks third among the top five Western oil companies. But Wall Street isn’t celebrating. Instead, analysts are worried that buried beneath the record profit figures are worrying signs of a business in decline.
    That’s because Shell hasn’t been able to find nearly as much oil and gas as it’s now pumping out of the ground. In fact, it hasn’t even come close—replacing only 60% to 70% of what it produced in 2005 and only 19% in 2004. Shell has had reserve problems for years—a controversy over improperly booked assets forced it to reduce estimated reserves by roughly 30% and led to the resignation of its CEO, Phil Watts, in 2004. But what’s troubling now is that Shell is falling way behind rivals like Exxon and BP despite spending billions more each year on exploring and drilling new wells. Last year Exxon replaced 112% of production; BP came up with 95%. "I have never seen anything like this," says Fadel Gheit, a veteran energy analyst with Oppenheimer & Co. "Shell used to represent the gold standard in this industry, but lately they can’t get their act together."
    To be sure, Shell still has huge assets—nearly 12 billion barrels. But in the oil and gas industry, reserve replacement is the best guide to whether a company will be able to maintain-or grow-production in the future. So not replacing what you pump, says longtime industry observer Matthew Simmons, "is like eating your seed corn. If you’re not finding new oil, you’re just liquidating what you’ve got." Indeed, Shell’s daily production figures have been weak lately, falling 6.7 % in 2005, to 3.52 million barrels a day.
    Privately, Shell execs say the company’s decision to cut spending for exploration when oil prices bottomed out in the late 1990s is partly to blame for the anemic numbers now. Shell CEO Jeroen Vander Veer insists that projects like those on Sakhalin Island off Siberia and in Nigeria and the Gulf of Mexico will enable the company to start catching up with peers in the years ahead. It won’t be easy. "If you’re not adding to reserves, you have a problem," says Sanford Bernstein analyst Oswald Clint. "Shell will have to run twice as hard just to stay in place."
选项 A、is a hidden process.
B、is caused by the profit last year.
C、is the estimation of Wall Street.
D、is the fault of the CEO.
答案C
解析 推理判断题。根据题干中的Shell定位至首段。开篇指出Shell公司的辉煌成绩：去年赚了230亿美元。第二句话锋一转：华尔街却不为此欣喜。末句对此说明：分析家们担心在这项破纪录的利润数字后面隐藏着生意下滑的不妙前景。由此可知壳牌公司生意滑坡是华尔街分析家们做出的预测。"a hidden process"是对末句中buried beneath的解释，但这里说的只是一种推断而已，并非已经确定的过程，hidden process的含义是虽然看不见，但确实存在，这与原意不符。第二段首句提到Shell生意可能下滑的原因：没有找到足够多的石油和天然气，排除"caused by the profit last year"。第二段第三句提到壳牌CEO Phil Watts于2004年辞职，这是由于前面提到的壳牌多年来存在的问题，这与首段分析家们对该公司生意下滑的预测无关，排除"the fault of the CEO"。
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