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  3. The Oil Produces World oil production is about to reach a peak and go into its final decline. For years, a handful of petrol

The Oil Produces World oil production is about to reach a peak and go into its final decline. For years, a handful of petrol

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问题                             The Oil Produces
    World oil production is about to reach a peak and go into its final decline. For years, a handful of petroleum geologists, including me, have been predicting peak oil before 2007, but in an era of cheap oil, few people listened. Lately, several major oil companies seem to have got the message. One of Chevron’s ads says the world is currently burning 2 bbl. of oil for every barrel of new oil discovered. Exxon Mobil says 1987 was the last year that we found more oil worldwide than we burned. Shell reports that it will expand its Canadian oil-sands operations but elsewhere will focus on finding natural gas and not oil. It sounds as though Shell is kissing the oil business goodbye. M. King Hubbert, a geophysicist, correctly predicted in 1956 that oil production in the U.S. would peak in the early 1970s—the moment now known as "Hubbert’s Peak", I believe world oil production is about to reach a similar peak.
    Finding oil is like fishing in a pond. After several months, you notice that you are not catching as many fish. You could buy an expensive fly rod-new technology. Or you could decide that you have already caught most of the fish in the pond. Although increased oil prices (which ought to spur investment in oil production) and new technology help, they can’t work magic. Recent discoveries are modest at best. The oil sands in Canada and Venezuela are extensive, but the Canadian operations to convert the deposits into transportable oil consume large amounts of natural gas, which is in short supply.
    And technology cannot eliminate the difficulty Hubbert identified: the rate of producing oil depends on the fraction of oil that has not yet been produced. In other words, the fewer the fish in the pond, the harder it is to catch one. Peak production occurs at the halfway point. Based on the available data about new oil fields, there are 2,013 billion bbl. of total producible oil. Adding up the oil produced from the birth of the industry until today, we will reach the dreaded 1, 006. 5-billion-bbl. halfway mark late this year. For two years, I’ve been predicting that world oil production would reach its peak on Thanksgiving Day 2005. Today, with high oil prices pushing virtually all oil producers to pull up every barrel they can sweat out of the ground, I think it might happen even earlier.
Why are some major oil companies mentioned in the first paragraph?
选项 A、To show the concern of these companies about oil problem.
B、To prove what the author said is true.
C、To illustrate the importance of these companies.
D、To explain the cause of the oil problem.
答案B
解析 推理判断题。从提问形式可以确定本题考查论据——论点型段落结构，题干中的major oil companies是支持性细节内容，要寻找其支持的论点，需要仔细阅读首段内容，区分观点和事实。开篇首句提出观点：世界石油生产量将到达峰值，最终将下滑。接下来第三句指出：最近，几家大石油公司似乎收到这一信息(石油生产量下滑)。之后，具体解释雪佛龙、埃克森美孚、壳牌等公司的石油生产情况。可见，作者提到这几家大石油公司是为了支持首句观点，故[B]“为了证明作者的观点正确”为答案。从首段所给出的各公司的细节内容来看，这些公司对石油的生产情况都很关注，但[A]是对细节内容本身的适度推断，并非其支持的观点，排除；文中提到major oil companies，可见它们地位举足轻重，这是不容争议的事实，显然不是细节支持的论点，排除[C]；首段没有提到石油问题产生的原因，故[D]不是提到major oil-companies的目的，排除。
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