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  3. As the oil industry gears up for the ongoing offshore-oil boom, scientists who study the sea floor say competition for scarce dr

As the oil industry gears up for the ongoing offshore-oil boom, scientists who study the sea floor say competition for scarce dr

admin2015-03-25  27
问题     As the oil industry gears up for the ongoing offshore-oil boom, scientists who study the sea floor say competition for scarce drilling resources is leaving them high and dry. "Funding goes down, oil goes up," laments paleoceanographer Henk Brinkhuis of Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Facing soaring costs and lengthening delays, the United States component of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program(IODP)—the current phase of the cooperative international investigation beneath the sea floor—has been literally stuck in dry dock, leading to an unprecedented 3-year hiatus in U.S. drilling. Japanese and European components of IODP are not faring much better. "I am very concerned about the long-term future of IODP," says marine geologist Craig Fulthorpe of the University of Texas, Austin.
    Perhaps the worst blow came when the United States set out several years ago to refurbish and modernize its drilling platform, the JOIDES Resolution, or more familiarly, the JR. The $130 million renovation job had a fixed cost in a Singapore shipyard, but as the rising cost of oil spurred a surge of offshore drilling, the yard shunted the scientific ship to the side to focus on building and refurbishing drilling platforms for well-heeled oil companies.
    Under the resulting schedule pressure, the JR—originally programmed to resume drilling in October 2007—will be leaving the yard in early March 2009. This delay pushed two 8-week drilling cruises led by Fulthorpe and by Brinkhuis back a full year on less than 2 months’ notice. "It is a disruption," says Fulthorpe. Meanwhile, the competition with the oil industry hit the Europeans even harder. They had signed a short-term contract for onetime use of a special-purpose drill ship, but the owner of the vessel broke the contract to lease it to a higher paying oil company, Brinkhuis says. The European component of IODP has not drilled in 2 years.
    With work on the JR nearing completion, researchers now fear that budget cuts may curtail scientific drilling for years to come. U. S. operations are being funded well below expectations of a few years ago, says James Allan of the U. S. National Science Foundation(NSF), which funds the U. S. component of IODP. NSF funding amounts to almost a 20% cut in inflation-adjusted dollars, he says. Scientists also face three-to four-fold increases in the cost of drilling consumables such as steel liners for drill holes and a recently estimated $ 1-million-per-month rise in the cost of fueling the JR.
    As a result of the soaring costs, NSF now plans for the JR to devote only 70% of its time to IODP drilling. The Japanese behemoth ship Chikyu is likewise drilling for IODP only 60% to 70% of the time. Yet, there’s plenty of science to be done. "There are now 30 drilling proposals(in the pipeline)that have been highly ranked," says Brinkhuis. With the reschedulings plus the cutbacks in operating time, much of that science will be delayed and some never tackled at all, scientists worry.
The expression "leaving them high and dry"(Line 2, Para. 1)probably means
选项 A、making them disappointed.
B、leaving them helpless.
C、making them angry.
D、making them sad.
答案B
解析 语义理解题。由题干提示定位至第一段。通过上下文可以推断，现在深海钻探处于困境，让科学家们举步维艰，孤立无助，[B]与之相符，故正确。
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