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  3. The dawn of the oil age was fairly recent. Although the stuff was used to waterproof boats in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, e

The dawn of the oil age was fairly recent. Although the stuff was used to waterproof boats in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, e

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问题     The dawn of the oil age was fairly recent. Although the stuff was used to waterproof boats in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, extracting it in earnest began only in 1859 after an oil strike in Pennsylvania. The first barrels of crude fetched $18. It was used to make kerosene, the main fuel for artificial lighting. Other liquids produced in the refining process were burned or dumped. But the unwanted petrol and diesel did not go to waste for long, thanks to the development of the internal-combustion engine a few years later.
    Since then demand for oil has risen steadily alongside ever-increasing travel by car, plane and ship. Three-fifths of it ends up in fuel tanks. With billions of Asian people growing richer and itching to get behind the wheel of a car, the big oil companies, the International Energy Agency(IEA)and America’s Energy Information Administration all predict that demand will keep on rising.
    We believe that they are wrong, and that oil is close to a peak. This is not the "peak oil" widely discussed several years ago, when several theorists reckoned that supply would flatten and then fall. We believe that demand, not supply, could decline. In the rich world oil demand has already peaked: it has fallen since 2005.
    The first revolution was led by a Texan who has just died. George Mitchell championed "fracking" as a way to release huge supplies of "unconventional" gas from shale beds. This, along with vast new discoveries of conventional gas, has recently helped increase the world’s reserves from 50 to 200 years. ln America, where thanks to Mr. Mitchell shale gas already billows from the ground, liquefied or compressed gas is finding its way into the tanks of lorries, buses and local-delivery vehicles.
    The other great change is in automotive technology. Rapid advances in engine and vehicle design also threaten oil’s dominance. Foremost is the efficiency of the internal-combustion engine itself. Petrol and diesel engines are becoming ever more frugal. The materials used to make cars are getting lighter and stronger. The growing popularity of electric and hybrid cars, as well as vehicles powered by natural gas or hydrogen fuel cells, will also have an effect on demand for oil.
    Not surprisingly, the oil "supermajors" and the IEA disagree. They point out that most of the emerging world has a long way to go before it owns as many cars, or drives as many miles per head, as America. But it would be foolish to extrapolate from the rich world’s past to booming Asia’s future. The sort of environmental policies that are reducing the thirst for fuel in Europe and America by imposing ever-tougher fuel-efficiency standards on vehicles are also being adopted in the emerging economies.
What made people realize that oil could be a source of fuel?
选项 A、The development of technology in exploring oil.
B、The development of artificial lighting using kerosene.
C、The development of refining process of crude oil.
D、The development of petrol- or diesel-powered engines.
答案D
解析 推理判断题。根据题干关键词a source of fuel定位到第一段最后一句。该句前面提到人们最初仅仅将从石油中提炼出来的煤油用来照明，而汽油和柴油这些副产品的用途并没有被发现。第一段最后一句说，多亏了几年后内燃机的发明，才没有长时间地将汽油和柴油这些副产品浪费掉。由此可知，是内燃机的发明使人们意识到了石油可以作为燃料来使用，因此选[D]。文章自始至终都没有提及石油开采技术的发展，故排除[A]；虽然该段第四句提到人造光源的主要燃料为炼油，但这仅是石油刚刚被发现时的主要用途，而不是煤油的使用导致了人们发现石油作为燃料这一用途，故排除[B]；文章也没有提及石油提炼技术的提高，故排除[C]。
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