Is there enough oil beneath the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)to help secure America’s energy future? President Bush cer

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问题    Is there enough oil beneath the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)to help secure America’s energy future? President Bush certainly thinks so. He has argued that tapping ANWR’s oil would help ease California’s electricity crisis and provide a major boost to the country’s energy independence. But no one knows for sure how much crude oil lies buried beneath the frozen earth, with the last government survey, conducted in 1998, projecting output anywhere from 3 billion to 16 billion barrels.
   The oil industry goes with the high end of the range, which could equal as much as 10% of U.S. consumption for as long as six years. By pumping more than 1 million barrels a day from the reserve for the next two to three decades, lobbyists claim, the nation could cut back on imports equivalent to all shipments to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia. Sounds good. An oil boom would also mean a multibillion-dollar windfall(意外之才) in tax revenues, royalties (开采权使用费)and leasing fees for Alaska and the Federal Government. Best of all, advocates of drilling say, damage to the environment would be insignificant. "We’ve never had a documented case of an oil rig chasing deer out onto the pack ice," says Alaska State Representative Scott Ogan.
   Not so fast, say environmentalists. Sticking to the low end of government estimates, the National Resources Defense Council says there may be no more than 3.2 billion barrels of economically recoverable oil in the coastal plain of ANWR, a drop in the bucket that would do virtually nothing to ease America’s energy problems. And consumers would wait up to a decade to gain any benefits, because drilling could begin only after much bargaining over leases, environmental permits and regulatory review. As for ANWR’s impact on the California power crisis, environmentalists point out that oil is responsible for only 1% of the Golden State’s electricity output—and just 3% of the nation’s.
Those against oil drilling in ANWR argue that ______.

选项 A、it can cause serious damage to the environment
B、it can do little to solve U.S. energy problems
C、it will drain the oil reserves in the Alaskan region
D、it will not have much commercial value

答案B

解析  根据第三段第二句“…a drop in the bucket that would do virtually nothing to ease America’s energy problems.”可知那些反对开采ANWR石油的人认为开采那里的石油对缓解美国能源短缺状况无济于事。do little to solve相当于do virtually nothing to solve。a drop in the bucket意为沧海一粟。本题亦属同义说法替代题。
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